2. Everyone can teach.

§ 6. "Everyone can teach; and, moreover, can teach that which he does not know himself."

Let us ask ourselves what is the meaning of this. First of all, we have to get rid of some ambiguity in the meaning of the word teach. To teach, according to Jacotot's idea, is to cause to learn. Teaching and learning are therefore correlatives: where there is no learning there can be no teaching. But this meaning of the word only coincides partially with the ordinary meaning. We speak of the lecturer or preacher as teaching when he gives his hearers an opportunity of learning, and do not say that his teaching ceases the instant they cease to attend. On the other hand, we do not call a parent a teacher because he sends his boy to school, and so causes him to learn. The notion of teaching, then, in the minds of most of us, includes giving information, or showing how an art is to be performed, and we look upon Jacotot's assertion as absurd, because we feel that no one can give information which he does not possess, or show how anything is to be done if he does not himself know. But let us take the Jacototian definition of teaching -causing to learn-and then see how far a person can cause another to learn that of which he himself is ignorant.

7. Subjects which are taught may be divided into. three great classes :-1, Facts; 2, reasonings, or generalisation from facts, i.e., science; 3, actions which have to be performed by the learner, i.e., arts.

1. We learn some facts by "intuition," ie., by direct experience. It may be as well to make the number of them as large as possible. No doubt there are no facts which are known so perfectly as these. For instance, a boy who has tried to smoke knows the fact that tobacco is apt to produce nausea much better than another who has picked up

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Can he teach facts he does not know?

the information second-hand. An intelligent master may suggest experiments, even in matters about which he himself is ignorant, and thus, in Jacotot's sense, he teaches things which he does not know. But some facts cannot be learnt in this way, and then a Newton is helpless either to find them out for himself, or to teach them to others without knowing them. If the teacher does not know in what county Tavistock is, he can only learn from those who do, and the pupils will be no cleverer than their master. Here, then, I consider that Jacotot's pretensions utterly break down. "No," the answer is; "the teacher may give his pupil an atlas, and direct the boy to find out for himself: thus the master will teach what he does not know." But, in this case, he is a teacher only so far as he knows. For what he does not know, he hands over the pupil to the maker of the map, who communicates with him, not orally, but by ink and paper. The master's ignorance is simply an obstacle to the boy's learning; for the boy would learn sooner the position of Tavistock if it were shown him on the map. "That's the very point," says the disciple of Jacotot. "If the boy gets the knowledge without any trouble, he is likely to forget it again directly. 'Lightly come, lightly go.' Moreover, his faculty of observation will not have been exercised." It is indeed well not to allow the knowledge even of facts to come too easily; though the difficulties which arise from the master's ignorance will not be found the most advantageous. Still there is obviously a limit, If we gave boys their lessons in cipher, and offered a prize to the first decipherer, one would probably be found at last, and meantime all the boys' powers of observation, &c., would have been cultivated by comparing like signs in different positions, and guessing at their mean.

Languages? Sciences?

ing; but the boys' time might have been better employed. Jacotot's plan of teaching a language which the master did. not know, was to put a book with, say, "Arma virumque cano," &c., on one side, and “I sing arms and the man, &c.” on the other, and to require the pupil to puzzle over it till he found out which word answered to which. In this case the teacher was the translator; and though from the roundabout way in which the knowledge was communicated the pupil derived some benefit, the benefit was hardly sufficient to make up for the expenditure of time involved.

Jacotot, then, did not teach facts of which he was ignorant, except in the sense in which the parent who sends his boy to school may be said to teach him. All Jacotot did was to direct the pupil to learn, sometimes in a very awkward fashion, from somebody else.*

§ 8. 2. When we come to science, we find all the best authorities agree that the pupil should be led to principles if possible, and not have the principles brought to him. Men like Tyndall, Huxley, H. Spencer, J. M. Wilson have spoken eloquently on this subject, and shown how valuable scientific teaching is, when thus conducted, in drawing out the faculties of the mind. But although a schoolboy may be led to great scientific discoveries by anyone who knows the road, he will have no more chance of making them with an ignorant teacher than he would have had in the days of the Ptolemies. Here again, then, I cannot understand how the teacher can teach what he does not know. He may, indeed, join his pupil in investigating principles, but he

* Here Jacotot's notion of teaching reminds one of the sophism quoted by Montaigne-"A Westphalia ham makes a man drink. Drink quenches thirst. Therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst."

Arts such as drawing and music?

must either keep with the pupil or go in advance of him. In the first case he is only a fellow-pupil; in the second, he teaches only that which he knows.

S9. Finally, we come to arts, and we are told that Jacotot taught drawing and music, without being either a draughtsman or a musician. In art everything depends on rightly directed practice. The most consummate artist cannot communicate his skill, and, except for inspiration may be inferior as a teacher to one whose attention is more concentrated on the mechanism of the art. Perhaps it is not even necessary that the teacher should be able to do the exercises himself, if only he knows how they should be done; but he seldom gets credit for this knowledge, unless he can show that he knows how the thing should be done, by doing it. Lessing tells us that Raphael would have been a great painter even if he had been born without hands. He would not, however, have succeeded in getting mankind to believe it. I grant, then, that the teacher of art need not be a first-rate artist, and, in some very exceptional cases, need not be an artist at all; but, if he cannot perform the exercises he gives his pupil, he must at least know how they should be done. But Jacotot claims perfect ignorance. We are told that he "taught " drawing by setting objects before his pupils, and making them imitate them on paper as besɩ they could. Of course the art originated in this way, and a person with great perseverance, and (I must say, in spite of Jacotot) with more than average ability, would make considerable progress with no proper instruction; but he would lose much by the ignorance of the person calling himself his teacher. An awkward habit of holding the pencil will make skill doubly difficult to acquire, and thus half his time might be wasted. Then, again, he would hardly have a better eye

True teacher within the learner.

than the early painters, so the drawing of his landscape would not be less faulty than theirs. To consider music I am told that a person who is ignorant of music can teach, say, the piano or the violin. This seems to go beyond the region of paradox into that of utter nonsense. Talent often surmounts all kinds of difficulties; but in the case of self taught, and ill-taught musicians, it is often painful to see what time and talent have been wasted for want of proper instruction.

I have thus carefully examined Jacotot's pretensions to teach what he did not know, because I am anxious that what seems to me the rubbish should be cleared away from his principles, and should no longer conceal those parts of his system which are worthy of general attention.

§ 10. At the root of Jacotot's paradox lay a truth of very great importance. The highest and best teaching is not that which makes the pupils passive recipients of other peoples' ideas (not to speak of the teaching which conveys mere words without any ideas at all), but that which guides and encourages the pupils in working for themselves and thinking for themselves. The master, as Joseph Payne well says, can no more think, or practise, or see for his pupil, than he can digest for him, or walk for him. The pupil must owe everything to his own exertions, which it is the function of the master to encourage and direct. Perhaps this may seem very obvious truth, but obvious or not it has been very generally neglected. The old system of lecturing which found favour with the Jesuits, has indeed now passed away, and boys are left to acquire facts from school-books instead of from the master. But this change is merely accidental. The essence of the teaching still remains. Even where the master does not confine himself to hearing what the scholars