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Utilitarianism defined.

the same thing, viz.—Cardinal Newman. The Cardinal, as the champion of authority, is perhaps prejudiced against Locke, who holds that "the faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceived those who trusted to it." Be this as it may, Newman asserts that "the tone of Locke's remarks is condemnatory of any teaching which tends to the general cultivation of the mind." (Idea of a University. Discourse vij., § 4; see also § 6.) A very interesting point for us to consider is then, Is this reputation of Locke's for utilitarianism well deserved ?

§ 20. First let us be quite certain of our definition..

In learning anything there are two points to be considered; Ist, the advantage we shall find from knowing that subject or having that skill, and 2nd, the effect which the study of that subject or practising for that skill will have on the mind or the body.

These two points are in themselves distinct, though it is open to anyone to maintain that they need not be considered separately. Nature has provided that the bodies of most animals should get the exercise best for them in procuring food. So Mr. Herbert Spencer has come to the conclusion that it would be contrary to "the economy of nature" if one set of occupations were needed as gymnastics and another for utility. In other words he considers that it is in learning the most useful things we get the best training.

The utilitarian view of instruction is that we should teach thir gs useful in themselves and either neglect the result on the mind and body of the learner or assume Mr. Spencer's law of "the economy of nature."

Again, when the subjects are settled the utilitarian thinks how the knowledge or skill may be most speedily acquired,

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L. not utilitarian in education.

and not how this method or that method of acquisition will affect the faculties.

§ 21. This being utilitarianism in education the ques tion is how far was Locke the utilitarian he is generally considered?

If we take by itself what he says under the head of "Learning" in the Thoughts concerning Education no doubt we should pronounce him a utilitarian. He considers each subject of instruction and pronounces for or against it according as it seems likely or unlikely to be useful to a gentleman. And in the methods he suggests he simply points out the quickest route, as if the owledge were the only thing to be thought of. Hence his utilitarian reputation.

But two very important considerations have been lost sight of.

Ist. Learning is with him "the last and least part" in education.

2nd. Intellectual education was not for childhood but for the age when we can teach ourselves. "When a man has got an entrance into any of the sciences," says he, "it will be time then to depend on himself and rely upon his own understanding and exercise his own faculties, which is the only way to improvement and mastery." (L. to Peterborough, quoted in Camb. edition of Thoughts, p. 229.) "So," he says, "the business of education is not, as I think, to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them capable of any when they shall apply themselves to it." The studies he proposes in the Conduct of the Understanding (which is his treatise on intellectual education) have for their object an increase of the powers and activity of the

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Locke's Pisgah Vision.

mind, not an enlargement of its possessions" (C. of U. § 19, ad f.).

Thus strange to say the supposed leader of the Utilitarians has actually propounded in so many words the doctrine of their opponents.

§ 22. When Locke is more studied it will be found that the Thoughts are misleading if we neglect his other works, more particularly the Conduct of the Understanding.

§ 23. Towards the end of his days, Locke was conscious of gleams of the "untravelled world" which lay before the generations to come. With great pathos he writes to a friend : "When I pnsider how much of my life has been trifled away in beaten tracks where I vamped on with others only to follow those who went before me, I cannot but think I have just as much reason to be proud as if I had travelled all England and, if you will, all France too, only to acquaint myself with the roads, and be able to tell how the highways lie wherein those of equipage, and even the common herd too, travel. Now, methinks-and these are often old men's dreams-I see openings to truth and direct paths leading to it, wherein a little application and industry would settle one's mind with satisfaction and leave no darkness or doubt. But this is the end of my day when my sun is setting and though the prospect it has given me be what I would not for anything be without-there is so much truth, beauty, and consistency in it-yet it is for one of your age, I think I ought to say for yourself, to set about" (L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, Locke, p. 120). But another 200 years have not sufficed to put us in possession of the Promised Land of which Locke had these Pisgah visions. We still " vamp on," following those who went before us and getting small help from expounders of " Edu.

Names of books.

Science for education.

cation as a Science." But as it would seem the days of vamping on blindly in the beaten track are drawing to a close. We cannot doubt that if Locke had known the wonderful advance which various sciences have made since his day he would have seen in them "openings to truth and direct paths leading to it" for many purposes, certainly for education. It is for our age and ages to come to set about applying our scientific knowledge to the bringing up of children; and thinkers such as Froebel will shew us how.

Locke's Thoughts concerning Education an his Conduct of the Understanding should be in the hands of all students of education who know the English language. I have therefore not attempted to epitomise what he has said, but have endeavoured to get at the main thoughts which are, so to speak, the taproot of his system. Of the Thoughts there is an edition published by the National Society and another by the Pitt Press, Cambridge. The Cambridge edition gives from FoxBourne's Life Locke's scheme of "Working Schools" and from Lord King's the essay "Of Study." Of the Conduct there is an edition published by the Clarendon Press. "F.B." in the references above stands for Fox-Bourne's Life of Locke. In the above essay I have not treated of Locke as a methodizer; but he advocated teaching foreign languages without grammar, and he published Æsop's Fables in English and Latin, interlineary. For the benefit of those, who not having a master would learn either of these Tongues." When I edited the Thoughts for Pitt Press I did not know of this book or I should have mentioned it.

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XIV.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU.

(1712-1778).

§ 1. THE great men whom we meet with in the history of education may be divided into two classes, thinkers and doers. There would seem no good reason why the thinker should not be great as a doer or the doer as a thinker; and yet we hardly find any records of men who have been successful both in investigating theory and directing practice. History tells us of first-rate practical schoolmasters like Sturm and the Jesuits; but they did not think out their own theory of their task: they accepted the current theory of their time. On the other hand, men who like Montaigne and Locke rejected the current theory and sought to establish a better by an appeal to reason were not practical schoolmasters. Whenever the thinker tries to turn his thought into action he has cause to be disappointed with the result. We saw this in the disastrous failure of Ratke; and even the books in which Comenius tried to work out his principles, the Vestibulum, Janua and the rest, with the exception of the Orbis Pictus, were speedily forgotten. In the world of education as elsewhere it takes time to find for great thoughts the practice which gives effect to them. The course of great thoughts is in some ways like the course of great rivers. Most romantic and beautiful near their source, they are not most useful. They must leave the

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