Confusion about special cases. Wax.

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.*

§ 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 would require a volume, nor would that reach it. Each man's mind has some peculiarity as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted by exactly the same method: besides that I think a prince, a nobleman, or an ordinary gentleman's son should have different ways of breeding. But having had here only some general views in reference to the main end and aims in education, and those designed for a gentleman's son, whom being then very little I considered only as white paper or wax to be moulded and

examining boards now flourishing are directed, to finding out what the pupil knows, have the effect of concentrating the teacher's effort upon the least important part of his function." Mark Pattison in N. Quart. M., January, 1880.

* Michelet (Nos fils, chap. ij. ad f. p. 170), says of Montaigne's essay : "c'est déjà une belle esquisse, vive et forte, une tentative pour donner, non l'objet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c'est l'homme."

Locke behind Comenius.

fashioned as one pleases, I have touched little more thar those heads which I judged necessary for the breeding of a young gentleman of his condition in general." (Thoughts, § 217, p. 187.)

No language could bring out more clearly the inferiority of Locke's standpoint to that of later thinkers. He makes ittle account of our common nature and wishes education to be based upon an estimate of the peculiarities of the individual pupil and of his social needs. And no one with an adequate notion of education could ever compare the young child to "white paper or wax." Perhaps the development of an organism was a conception that could not have been formed without a great advance in physical science. Froebel who makes most of it learnt it from the scientific study of trees and from mineralogy. We need not then be surprised that Locke does not say, as Pestalozzi said a hundred years later, "Education instead of merely considering what is to be imparted to children ought to consider first what they already possess." But if he had read Comenius he would have been saved from comparing the child to wax or white paper in the hands of the educator. Comenius had said: "Nature has implanted within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety. The object of education is to bring these seeds to perfection." (Supra, p. 135.) This seems to me a higher conception than any that I meet with in Locke.

15. But if our philosopher did not learn from Comenius. he certainly learnt from Montaigne.* Indeed Dr. Arns'adt # Pope seems to contrast Montaigne and Locke: "But ask not to what doctors I apply!

"Sworn to no master, of no sect am I :

"As drives the storm, at any door I knock,

"And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke."

Satires iij., 26.

Humanists, Realists, and Trainers.

(v. supra, p. 69) has put him into a series of thinkers who have much in common. This succession is as follows: Rabelais, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau; and, according to Mr. Browning's division, they form a school by themselves. "Thinkers on education," says Mr. Browning,* 66 are Ist those who wish to educate through the study of the classics, or 2nd those who wish to educate through the study of the works of Nature, or 3rd those who aim at an education independent of study and knowledge, and think rather of the training of character and the attaining to the Greek ideal, the man beautiful and good." To the three schools Mr. Browning gives the names Humanist, Realist, and Naturalist, ("nos autres naturalistes," Montaigne says). Locke he considers one of the principal writers of the "naturalistic" school, and says, Locke “has given a powerful bias to naturalistic education both in England and on the Continent for the last 200 years." (Ed. Theories, p. 85.)

This use of the word "naturalistic" seems to me somewhat misleading, or at best vague, and it is a word overworked already: so I should prefer to speak of the "developing" or 66 training" school. The classification itself certainly has its uses but it must be employed with caution. If caught up by those who have only an elementary acquaintance with the subject a class of persons apt to delight in such arrangements as an aid to memory, these divisions may easily prove a hindrance to light.

§ 16. This subject of classification is so important to

Perhaps as Dr. Abbott suggests he took Montaigne as representing active and Locke contemplative life.

* See "An introduction to the History of Educational Theories," by Oscar Browning.

Caution against classifiers.

students that it may be worth while to make a few remarks upon it. The only thoroughly consistent people are the people of fiction. We can know all about them. Directly we understand their central thought or peculiarity we may be sure that everything they say and do will be strictly in accordance with it, will indeed be explainable by it. To take a bald and simple instance, directly we know that Mrs. Jellaby in Bleak House is absorbed by her interest in an African Mission, we know all that is to be known about her; and everything she does or omits to do has some reference to Borrioboola Ghar. But in real life not only are people much less easily understood, but when we actually have seized their main idea or peculiarity or interest we must not expect to find them always consistent: and they will say and do much which if not inconsistent with the main idea or peculiarity or interest has at least no connection with it. Suppose, e.g., you can make out with some certainty that Locke belonged to the developing school, you must not expect him to pay little heed to instruction as such. Again, suppose you find that his philosophy was utilitarian; you must not suppose that in everything he says he will be thinking of utility.

Now the historian is tempted to treat real men and women as the writer of fiction treats his puppets. Having fastened, quite correctly let us suppose, on their main peculiarity he considers it necessary to square everything with his theory of them, and whatever will not fall in with it he, if he is unscrupulous, misrepresents, or if he is scrupulous, suppresses.

Again, we are too apt to read into words meanings derived from controversies unknown at the time when the words were uttered. This is a well-known fact in the history of religious thought. We must always consider not merely the words used but the time when they were used.

Locke and development.

What a man might say quite naturally and orthodoxly at one period would be sufficient to convict him of sympathizing with some terrible heresy if uttered half a century later. We find something like this in the history of education. If anyone nowadays speaks of the pleasure with which as a young man he read Tacitus, he is understood to mean that he is opposed to the introduction of " modern studies" into the school-room. If on the other hand he extols botany, or regrets that he never learned chemistry, this is taken for an assault on classical instruction. But, of course, no such inference could be drawn if we went back to a time when the antithesis between classics and natural science had not been accentuated. In many other instances we have to be on our guard against forcing into language meaning which belongs rather to a later date.

§ 17. With these cautions in mind let us see how far Locke may be said (1) to be a trainer, and (2) how far a utilitarian.

§ 18. I. Mr. Browning attributes to Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke the desire to bring up a well-developed man rather than a good scholar. But Rabelais certainly craved for the knowledge of things; and if he is to be classed at all I should put him rather with the Realists, albeit he lived before the realistic spirit became powerful. Montaigne went more on the lines of developing rather than teaching, and, shrewd man of the world as he was, he thought a great deal about the art of living. But his ideal was not so much the man as the gentleman. This was true also of Locke; and here we see some explanation why both Montaigne and Locke do not value classical learning.*

History and the mathematics, I think, are the most proper and