EDUCATION.

Freethought Review, Volume II, Issue 14, 1 November 1884, Page 10

EDUCATION.

A dim cavern against whose deep shadows the figures of wild looking human creatures show in the light of a feeble fire. Hardly human, scarcely should we be ready to call them brethren if we saw them in the sunlight to-day, but men still, even if the " ape and " tiger" in them is disagreeably prominent. Unclothed they sit, tearing away the flesh from the bones of the cave-lion which is the prize of their hunting prowess and testifies that even the spear, headed with its poor flint-flake point, is a tool of mastery against the giant brutes which roam through the forest and wallow in the fens where the city is one day to arise with its " shouts and leagues of lights, and the roaring of the " wheels." We can hardly distinguish (through matted hair and dirt) which are the mates of these rude dwellers in the cave ; beauty there is none, of form little to be noticed, for the sexes have not differentiated much yet, and Time has still to evolve the fair forms that " in " gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls" chain the modern masculine eye ; but one certain way, common to all savages, marks the distinction, the females sit back in the deeper shadows, and catch the half gnawed bones thrown over the shoulders of their masters. Then, when the meal is done, the hunter fathers teach their boys the ways of the chase, the signs ot the slot of the urus and the mammoth, the vulnerable point where the arrow may pierce the heart of the auroch, the sure setting of the clumsy but effective pitfall. This is their physical education, and the great business of their lives, but, as the fire dies down, there passes from lip to lip (in that far beginning of our social state) the strange, weird, foolish stories of uncultured superstition, the wondrous dream which showed some dead comrade, tales of awful shapes seen by the lightning glare, and of shrill whispers heard in the storm from the voices of those dim unseen Ones who pushed the winds along and threw down the frozen hail. Privation, ignorance, solitude and long fasting were the prolific parents of the supernatural to man in the infancy of his race, and as the generations went on in their countless succession, as the tools and weapons needed for the preservation of their hard lives improved, as the bodily education advanced, so the element of wonder in those childish minds strengthened towards more mystical and subtle spiritual relations. Is it strange that with such beginnings, cruelty and bloodshed have been so hard to eradicate and so slow to pass away that even now we have gigantic lessons to unlearn and stubborn mental hedges to break through.

Over a great interval of time let us leap; a monstrous interval; let us pass that two hundred thousand years which scientists tell us lie between the savage of the Glacial epoch and the Feudal System in Britian, and picture another scene, typical in itself of many another such event. Lanfranc, the scholar of Pavia, is one renowned for his skill in oratory, in law, and in theology, the idol of the learned men of his day, one of whom (Ordericus Vitalis) says " His opinions were " given with so much wisdom that learned doctors, " judges and prelates of the city readily adopted them " —This Lanfranc has experienced a religious conversion ; all that has hitherto seemed worthy of his thoughts has suddenly grown black in the conviction of sin, so in the desire to attain peace of mind he quits the world of activity, and journeys on, a poor wanderer, over unknown paths and through strange lands. After being attacked by robbers and near death, he, reaching the banks of the river Risle, sees a few poor huts surrounded by tilled fields. This is a monastery, presided over by Herluin, a noble man but so uneducated in letters that he cannot even read or write. At the feet

of this lowly Abbot the once proud scholar fell. In that humble dwelling he remained for many years, dedicating his life to teaching and elevating the minds of others, with such success that men from every part of the civilized world came to sit at his feet, sons of princes and nobles glad to be his scholars, and at last the collection of huts replaced by a stately pile. When this man afterwards became the favorite prelate of William the Conqueror and was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, he was already one of the most celebrated men in Europe. Before he left Normandy to him came Anselm, another such as himself (and his successor); let us examine somewhat of the mode of teaching these men used, and its success, “ When he “ used to teach ” says Eadmer, “ he was especially “ careful to be most plain spoken, avoiding all pomp “ and generalities and illustrating his meaning as best “ he could by any familiar or homely example. All “ men rejoiced in his converse, he gained the love of “ young and old, of men and women, of rich and poor, “ and all were glad to minister to him. After his first “ visit to England there was no earl or countess or “ great person there who did not think they had missed “ favour in the sight of God if they haply had not an “ opportunity of rendering some service to Anselm, “Abbot of Bee”—The effect of such teachings and examples of lives like these was deep and lasting, evidenced by the higher standard of purity, begetting the ideals of chivalry and somewhat softening and preventing the almost continuous bloodshedding of the age, but, alas ! evidenced also by the readiness with which for centuries men in misdirected faith threw away their lives and property in the wars for the recovery of the holy sepulchre, and gave half the lands of England into the hands of churchmen in “ frank o “ almoigne ” (“free alms”) that their souls might be prayed for. And the ascetic virtue of fasting brought to those teachers, as to their savage forefathers, the power to “ see visions and dream dreams," the secluded unwholesome life became clouded with falsehood and unreality and too weak to impress its good part sufficiently on that fierce fighting world whose real creed was “ The spoils to the Victor ! ” In that outside world of the middle ages, as in the primitive cave, it was the father's first duty to teach his son the use of the weapon wherewith to slay ; not the flint headed arrows now but the battle axe and the “ misericorde,” not against monsters of the forest but against his own brethren, as fatal and almost as ruthless. War always, strife everywhere, those men of olden time toil up the centuries to us on steps slippery with blood. War was the education, the necessity of old days, let us be glad that we have risen above it into a calm atmosphere of Reason and Peace. Yes, and cheerfuly pay our taxes for such sweet offspring of Peace and Progress as the Armstrong and the Gatling, the Nordenfelt and the Torpedo. Surely those great schools where our young soldiers are trained to systematic slaughter, and surely too the forced contributions of struggling laborers are but dreams ! Is it a dream also that thousands are perishing in the great centres of population, not from want of ability to work or absence of desire to work, but because in the awful strain and tension of modern industrial life they are crushed below the starvation line ? Now the father has to teach his sons, as of old, the use of the weapons of war ; not only the use of his rifle in the Cadet Corps so that the “ heir of all the “ ages" may make havoc in the vitals of some other human being, but also that viler art of war, the art of being able to hold his own and exist in a society where every man’s hand is on his brother’s throat in the keen struggle for bread. That such an education is necessary now, after our proud boasting of our advance, is a disgrace, and a mockery, and a curse. The war between nations is not the greatest of evils, nor death on the battle field a thing to be too much dreaded. “ By the “ doors of life, by the gates of breath, there are worse “ things waiting for men than death,”-and of these worse things is that petrification of the heart, that want of brotherly sympathy which modern education neglects so hugely. The education 1 speak of is not the school “cram" of names of rivers, and dales of royal accessions, and decimal fractions, it is the educa- ' tion we receive hourly by the utterances of our teachers,

the spirit of our daily press, the voices of our public men. When one reads constantly and recognises incessantly the paltry ends for which the multitude strive, the meannesses deified and adored, the worship of wealth inculcated directly nowhere but indirectly everywhere, the cant about the " dignity of labour " and success being the reward of merit, then the modern education shows itself a vain spectre with only a ghastly " aura " (as the Spiritualists call it) to shadow forth what once had nerve and power and life. What have we gained above the old convent education ? Then, at all events, the lesson was impressed that there was a blessing on good unselfish deeds not only in the hereafter but in the present world, where God fought in the ordeal of battle for the man who had Truth on his side, that Honour (in such phase as they viewed it) was worth living for and worth dying for, that chastity and modesty in women was the reality of which the lily crown of the Queen of Heaven was the symbol. This was the seed they sowed, on stony ground too often, but the intent was pure, and the teacher taught " according to his " light." We have gained much by experience in actual knowledge, we have found that there is no supernatural interference between individuals to uphold the right, that our modern French proverb that " the Heavens light on the side of the big battalions," is a concise rendering of the stern law of the " survival " of the fittest," that the rules of honor once held noble were often false in detail, that any real reasoning by the mass of humanity is a modern product—for in old days men were mere automata, whose strings were pulled at will by cunning priests and kings ; but, chief of all, that education, relegated to the celibate and the theologian, degenerated into the vilest kind of tyranny, especially over the female mind. But in opening our eyes to this knowledge, and in steering ourselves away from the Scylla of ecclesiastical teaching, we are rapidly drifting into a Charybdis of low and sordid motives of action and views of life, in which the old, outworn ideals are washed away and unreplaced. A few voices here and there rise among us, denouncing the cruel grinding rush for wealth, but few are they who listen and fewer still those who act on the lesson. How many feel that having spent sufficient of their toil to get food and clothing and bar the door against poverty, something should be done for Beauty, something for Sympathy, something for the thinking out and working out of escape from the great troubles that are trampling down their thousands in the wastes of the great cities ? It is not in Parliament that this work can be done, there is too little time, too much party spirit, too much debating for reporters and constituencies, for us to expect lofty mental effort beyond that expended on the practical issue of the moment. So with the newspaper, it is the organ of the actor rather than the thinker, of the man of business more than of the man who believes that business should be something less in our lives than it is, and that all wisdom is not to be found between the pages of the ledger. The main point to be looked at in regard to education is that it should have a firm and steady grasp of the things of to-day, piercing through the glamour and stripping off the falsehood ; without this the brightest hope for tomorrow has no secure foundation. But to plan wisely for to-morrow we must have drank the secret of yesterday, and know the causes of passing events, that we may benefit by the failures as well as successes of our forefathers. One of the greatest charms which study of olden writers can give us is that they bring sympathy fresh from our hearts for their joys and sorrows ; we feel that the)- had the delights and griefs and passions which fill our own brief record and Ave recognise how eternal is that renewal of the race-life we are passing op. to our inheritors. So also, in the study of Nature

we may find an open door through which avc can escape into a purer and higher atmosphere than that narrow little life of the individual which must represent to most of us the wide Universe. How few are there sufficiently educated in a deep love of Nature to fairly appreciate the exquisite beauty of colour and form in flowers, the significance and spirituality of a glorious sunset, the awful rytlun and majesty of a stormy sea. And in those who have imbibed such culture it but too

often ends there and teaches them nothing of sympathy with the infinite pathos of human trouble and the infinite beauty of the tender human soul. Many have not even that result of education we call “ self control,” the empire over the bodily passions, known well in the past to men of little culture and with none of our advantages. Let me cite one single instance, an anecdote from the life of a Saracen chieftain, one Hasan. “ They relate a wonderful instance of the forbearance “of the Caliph. A slave having spilled a dish of “ scalding broth upon him as he sat at table, threw “ himself down instantly at his knees, and repeated “ these words of A 1 Koran : ‘ Paradise is open to those “ ! that govern their passions,’ Hasan answered him, “ 1 I am not at all in a passion.’ The slave went on, ‘And “ 1 to those that pardon offences.’ ‘ I pardon you yours,’ “ said Hasan, The slave went on to the end of the “ verse, which says, ‘ God loves those above all who do “ ‘ good to them that have offended them.’ Hasan con- “ eluded too, ‘ Since it is so, I give you your liberty and “ 4 four hundred drachms of silver.’ ” —(Ockley). That man had one great element of education, the self control he showed proved that unlimited power over the lives of thousands and a long career of conquest had not shaken his firm well-balanced soul, or developed him into a tyrant. We have many tyrants and are developing more ; we, as a race are not only exalting the priesthood of Mammon but teaching our children the foul cant about industry being the one thing needful and success the reward of merit. We promulgate not only the gospel of “ The Flight of Projectiles” to destroy the sacred house of the body but the evangel of “ suc--44 cessful merit ” to darken the soul, though we know well all the time through what dark and sinuous windings, through what gloomy fraudful chambers some successful feet have passed. There is no dignity in labour as mere labour ; having passed the food-getting stage, work in itself whether mental or physical can only be dignified by the end it strives for. If it makes no man more capable, no man more upright, nothing more beautiful, nothing more useful, it is worse than wasted. And what ugly work lies around us in the world, what energy spent for ignoble ' ends! One man is seen toiling night and day for a petty ambition, another for contemptible avarice, another for the vile applause of those who never think and never will think. “ Light is the sorrow,” says Seneca, “ that obtains comfort of counsel,” but if we take not counsel together there is a giant sorrow coming which will bring danger to us, as it has done to the overcrowded cities whence rises the “ hitter cry ” of the poor. 44 Work ! give us work !” is the pitiful appeal that goes up to mills working half-time and manufactories closed for months lest too much be produced, the markets glutted, and the prices fall. Here, in New Zealand, in our quiet little corner of the earth, with starvation kept well at bay by most of us, we stop our ears as with wool to the wailings from over the sea, but the solemn step approaches every hour, and the curse of older nations hastens. If we do not teach each other to have sympathy with those who suffer ; if we go on proclaiming that he who can by any means acquire wealth will rest secure for the future, as on an Olympus, whose base is on the hearts of thousands who give the fruits of their labour for the one 44 meritorious ” man ; that those who, like Shakespeare and Goethe, gave their lives to make this world worth living in, are to be counted as nothing but dross beside the heaper-up of coin ; then the trouble will burst on us one day like a second deluge. But we must avert this, we must learn that, to advance really, we must advance along the whole line, each cheering his comrade, that our energies are not to be utterly spent in that most devilish pursuit, the civil war of society, that modern science and modern progress are not for the benefit of one master over ten thousand slaves; and that gigantic and glorious products of the human mind, like the steam engine and the telegraph, shall be for common blessings to every one of us, and not, like the spear of the savage of the Glacial drift, or the battle-axe of the medieval reitter, mere instruments of. murder and oppression. Low. Tkegeak. New Plymouth. 1 •