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For children, health and habits.

the school-room. If a common sailor were to teach an Eskimo English, he would very likely suppose that when he had taught the sounds "Paris is the capital of France,” he had conveyed to his pupil all the ideas which those sounds suggested to his own mind. A common schoolmaster may fall into a similar error.

§ 11. In the most celebrated work which has been affected by the Thoughts of Locke, Rousseau's Emile, we find childhood treated in a manner altogether different from youth the child's education is mainly physical, and instruction is not given till the age of twelve. Locke's system on first sight seems very different to this, but there is a deeper connection between the two than is usually observed. We have seen that Locke allowed nothing to be knowledge that was not acquired by the perception of the intellect. But in children the intellectual power is not yet developed; so according to Locke knowledge properly socalled is not within their reach. What then can the educator do for them? He can prepare them for the age of reason in two ways, by caring first for their physical health, second for the formation of good habits.

§ 12. 1st. On the Continent Locke has always been considered one of the first advocates of physical education, and he does, it is true, give physical education the first place, a feature in his system, which we naturally connect with his study of medicine, and also with the trouble he had all his life with his own health. But care of the body, and especially bodily exercises, were always much thought of in this country, and the main writers on education before Locke, e.g., Sir Thos. Elyot, Mulcaster, Milton, were very emphatic about physical training.

In the autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we

Everything educative forms habits.

may see what attention was paid in Locke's own century to this part of education.*

§ 13. 2nd. "That, and that only, is educative which moulds forms or modifies the soul or mind." (Mark Pattison in New Quarterly Magazine, January, 1880.)

Here we have a proposition which is perhaps seldom denied, but very commonly ignored by those who bring up the young. But Locke seems to have been entirely possessed with this notion, and the greater part of the Thoughts is nothing but a long application of it. The principle which lies at the root of most of his advice, he has himself expressed as follows: "That which I cannot too often inculcate is, that whatever the matter be about which it is conversant whether great or small, the main, I had almost said only thing, to be considered in every action of a child is what influence it will have upon his mind; what habit it tends to, and is likely to settle in him: how it will become him when he is bigger, and if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him when he is grown up." (Thoughts, § 107, p. 86.)

Here we see that Locke differed widely from the schoolmasters of his time, perhaps of all time. A man must be a philosopher indeed if he can spend his life in teaching boys, and yet always think more about what they will be and what they will do when their schooling is over than what they will know. And in these days if we stopped to think at all we should be trodden on by the examiner.†

* For Rabelais, see p. 67 supra.

In the notes to the Cambridge edition of the Thoughts Locke's advice on physical education is discussed and compared with the results of modern science by Dr. J. F. Payne.

"Examinations directed, as the paper examinations of the numerous

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 than 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 little 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. Arnstädt

* 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,* "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 con

siders 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 "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.

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