Essays and addresses : an attempt to treat some religious questions in a scientific spirit

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Preface To The Second Edition

It is a great satisfaction to me to have learned that a cheap edition of this volume has been wanted. It deals exclusively with principles, and is not, I think, out of date ; and in revising it for the press I have not found it necessary to make any alterations.

The Vicarage, Rochdale, October 1894.

Preface To The First Edition

Most of the addresses in this volume have been printed before in fugitive shape, and are now reprinted in nearly chronological order, with very slight alterations. It will be found, I think, that they have a certain unity of purpose, — an attempt to state clearly the results of reflection on some questions connected with religion in its present intellectual aspects. Some of these lectures in their pamphlet form interested the few persons into whose hands they found their way, and I hope that they may now be helpful to a wider circle of readers, who are occupied with the same questions.

The Letter to a Bristol Artisan was privately circulated for reasons stated in the opening pages of the letter. But those reasons are not now equally valid, and in deference to some opinions for which I have the highest respect, I have included it in the volume.

With reference to the lecture on Stoicism, I wish to disclaim any first-hand knowledge of Seneca, and all but a slight acquaintance with the other Stoic writers in the original. Those readers who know C. Martha's Momlistes sous rEmpire Romain will see that I have used that excellent essay largely.

J. M. WILSON.

Clifton College, May 18S7.

Contents

PAGE

I. Water — Some Properties and Peculiarities of it ; a

Chapter in Natural Theology i

II MORALITY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AND ITS RELATION TO RELIGION i

A FRAGMENT

The subject which I have chosen needs no apology. It concerns every member of our Society, and touches on the principles and practice of the whole profession. I deeply regret that, from want of leisure, as well as from other causes, I am wholly unable to do more than break ground in it.

Public School education is, of course, but one phase of our national education ; but it is so very closely connected, on the one hand, with our whole political, moral, and social condition, and, on the other hand, with all other educational bodies and systems, with Universities, with Private and Preparatory Schools, and even with the education adopted in Girls' Schools, that, in discussing any great question connected with Public Schools, there is no one engaged in education who can say that the subject does not concern him. Further, Public Schools are becoming more and more important as a factor in national higher education. The Great Schools grow larger and larger; twenty years have seen a considerable increase to their number and magnitude, and they do not seem even yet to have reached their limit. Private Schools are, on the contrary, tending to become preparatory to Public Schools.

1 Delivered as the Presidential Address to the Education Society, ist November 1881.

Now, Public School education has become what it is, partly, of course, as a result of the reaction on it of society as a whole. It is an outcome of the national genius and traditions ; its merits and defects are those of the nation, and of the particular time in which we write. This is obvious. But let it also be remembered that schools are not mere passive recipients of external influences ; they are strong enough in themselves, and influential enough by their position, to be themselves a power, a reaction on society. They are in the hands of persons presumably specially intelligent and public-spirited, drawn not from any narrow section of society or clique, clerical or social, but representative as a whole of the widest and most enlightened culture and thought ; and hence they have a real function in the nation, if they can but rightly formulate it. It is in this aspect that we are bound to regard our work, not as a result of society, but as a power to affect it : within no narrower limits he our work and our responsibility. This responsibility lies chiefly on the Head-masters of the Public Schools par excellence , but, in their degree, on all Head-masters and on all Masters : in a word, on all who take part in education in any form.

The saying of Wilhelm von Humboldt will occur to many of us, that, whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of a nation, must be first introduced into its schools. This is the real text of my discourse.

It is a wide subject. According to this, we must look to schools for a revival of simplicity of life ; for training in truth and moral courage ; for real intellectual training ; for giving men the power of hard thought of seeing things as they are ; and not giving only a superficial culture and a positive distaste for the unsymmetrical facts of life. The schools must educate the young to keen social and political interests ; must bind classes together in an unselfishness that is often wanting in the weary pleasure-seeking classes : in a word, must revive public spirit. The schools must give that self-restraint of the body, that purity of moral tone and conduct, that moral horror of degradation, on which more than anything else the welfare of the nation depends.

n AND ITS RELATION TO RELIGION 27

And, lastly, the schools must educate, develop, guide, and instruct that spiritual faculty in the child and boy, which, by whatever name we call it, is supreme.

Papers on great subjects like these, the national needs, and the power of schools to do something to supply them, and their lamentable shortcomings in not a few of these respects, may well occupy the attention of your Society. I shall to-day touch on one only, on the question of morality, and its connection with religious teaching, and on the duty and possibilities of schools to affect the morality of the country. What I can say will be, I foresee, a very incomplete fragment.

It must, I believe, be admitted as a fact, that immorality, used in a special sense, which I need not define, has been of late increasing among the upper classes in England, and specially in the great cities. Those who have the best opportunities of knowing, who can from personal knowledge compare the tone of society now with that of twenty, thirty, forty years ago, speak most positively of this deterioration. This is not the place to give details or evidence. There is amply sufficient ground for alarm that the nation may be on the eve of an age of voluptuousness and reckless immorality. Even if the phenomena of so-called philosophy, as well as of practice, which lead many thoughtful people to this conclusion, be otherwise interpreted ; if the increase is not real, but only apparent, and due to the greater pubhcity of life, it remains none the less true that it is the business of schools to prepare boys to face this evil. When one reflects that the present immorality is due to those who have left school within the last thirty or forty years, it is impossible not to speculate whether something could not have been done during those years to have diminished the existing evil. It is surely the duty of schools venienti occurrere niorbo. I do not think it can be doubted that the immorality of manhood is often a direct consequence of earlier immorality.

I have said that there are grounds for fearing that immorality is on the increase among the wealthier classes. But it must be carefully noted, as a sign that education is not without a direct influence on conduct in this respect, that at the Universities — I mean at Oxford and Cambridge — this is not the case. There is, I believe, a fair consensus of opinion — I think, an entire consensus of well-qualified opinion — that the Universities are better than they were, and have a standard distinctly higher than that of any similar aggregate of men, — higher, that is, than the standard of the individuals of which it is composed. The traditions and influence of the society act as an appreciable check on its members. Of course, these are most felt in those colleges which are most representative of the University, for it is well known that the difference between one college and another is great in this as in other respects.

Further, it must be noted that the morality of Public School men as a whole is the best. At the Universities a fair comparison can be made between the moral effect of the education of the large Public Schools, and of the private and smaller schools, and the verdict is distinctly in favour of the Great Schools taken as a class. It is of importance to my purpose to insist on this point ; otherwise it might be inferred, from my choice of a subject, that I think the Public Schools are the chief offenders. T believe that the very opposite is the case; that, while what I have to say applies, in very different degrees, to all of them, it applies with still more force to other schools. And I attribute the difference between one class of schools and another, and between the members of the same class (it being remembered that the boys are of the same social rank), chiefly, if not exclusively, to the degree of insight into moral conditions, the sense of responsibility for those conditions, and the spiritual force to control them, which have characterised, in the past and present, the men who, as head and assistant masters, have been in charge of those schools.

Let us now proceed to examine into the causes, so far as they are remediable, for a low standard of school morality, and their remedies, as far as they can be gathered by experience. I cannot pretend to deal with this subject exhaustively. I can only speak of one class of schools. Doubtless the masters of Middle Class schools meet the

" AND ITS RELATION TO RELIGION 29

same problem, and it would be most instructive to us to hear how they face it.

One of the causes of immorality is idleness and luxurious livmg. This, at any rate, the schools can to some extent deal with. It is necessary, from this point of view alone, that fare should be simple (meat once a day is better than twice), that great temperance in the use of alcohohc hquor, if not indeed total abstinence from it, should be secured ; that discipline should be good ; industry great ; exercise abundant, carried on up to the point of fatigue, two or three times a week; and that time should be fully occupied. Nothing to do is the parent of vice of all sorts. That a boy should be bored at school, from the monotony or the absence of employment, is a blot on the school, because it is a great danger to the boy. It is the business of masters to provide both work and play, and, what is more difficult, a variety of rational and interesting voluntary occupations, which are intermediate between work and play, which occupy time, which fill the thoughts, and break up those deadly blank times in which evil germs breed.^

Again, it is necessary that what may be called the mechanical arrangements should be carefully attended to, in respect of dormitories and other places. I shall pass over this very important point without going into detail, though I hold very decided views on the subject ; but I think it might be worth the while of the Head-masters' Conference to collect information and opinions on such mechanical arrangements, and on school moral sanitation generally, and digest it into a report for the use of the profession.

Let me, however, say at once that no reliance must be placed on any mere mechanical arrangements. They may form conditions unfavourable to some forms of immorality, and we are bound therefore to secure them ; but they cannot be regarded as powers and influences working for morality. Should any parent, anxious about the choice of

1 I find I have unconsciously almost quoted this sentence from a most valuable article on Rugby, in the New Quarterly Magazine, for October 1879, p. 273.

a school, read this address, I would most seriously warn him not to attach much weight to the apparent excellence of arrangements. Some of the very worst schools have these arrangements in the highest perfection. They cannot afford to have them otherwise. Neat cubicules and spotless dimity have beguiled an uninterrupted sequence of mammas, and have kept alive, and even flourishing, schools which are in a thoroughly bad moral state, and are hopelessly inefficient in every particular. Of course, many a parent feels that he ought to judge for himself, and these mechanical arrangements are too often the only material on which he can form his judgment. Let me assure him that they are entirely untrustworthy.

We must go somewhat deeper. Some persons advocate a general teaching of physiology. They urge that, as knowledge is sure to come, it is plainly better that it should come formally, seriously, from accredited teachers, and not be left to be picked up in a fragmentary way that most stimulates curiosity from the least desirable companions, and so be regarded as a guilty knowledge. They point out that it is the mystery, the secrecy, that forms one of the allurements to such knowledge. They would remove the mystery. The knowledge would be accompanied with proper warnings, and the evil would be checked at its source. This is a common view taken by younger men, and is therefore important.

I cannot, in the least, assent to their view. In the first place, I do not think its advocates take into account at how early an age such teaching would have to begin. It would not be at the Public Schools, it would be at the very earliest preparatory schools. Perhaps none but Public School masters and doctors are aware at how early an age such knowledge is acquired and in some instances bad habits begin. To the question which must sometimes be put, " Where did you learn this ? " the answer invariably is, "At my first school." It follows, then, that such teaching, if it is to anticipate the evil, must be given at an age at which it would be practically impossible.

It is not, I think, credible that such teaching would do

'I AND ITS RELATION TO RELIGION 31

much to eradicate bad habits already formed. On the contrary, I feel sure it would promote them, partly from curiosity, partly from the consciousness that all the others had their thoughts turned in the same direction. The freedom of conversation that would follow would be an incalculable evil.

In the next place, whether the facts above stated be admitted or denied, there is the fatal objection to the proposal, that it is so utterly repulsive to our nature to give this teaching that men and women of high character and refinement could not and would not do it. What sort of man would he be who would face a class on such a subject ? A certain doctor pressed this method very strongly on the late head-master of one of our great schools, and he was met by the objection I am now urging. The doctor made light of it, saying he should at any rate teach his own son, then a fine open-faced youngster, before he went to school. Years after, they met again, and returned to the subject. "Did you teach your son as you intended?" was the question. " No," the answer was, " I found myself absolutely unable to begin." This is, I believe, a typical instance. I think the doctor was wrong. But if he could not teach his own son, how could he have taught a class ?

Further, we have no reason for thinking that knowledge would produce purity. There is, in fact, a good deal of experience, open to any one, that would lead one to the opposite conclusion. A very large proportion of boys grow up in entire ignorance of certain forms of immorality. To mention these in the presence of such boys would be a great crime and cruelty. Whatever may be the right solution of the question, it is not in this quarter that we must look for it. There is, perhaps, an age at which some information may well be given, but it is not at this early age.

Another and very different solution is, for a master, or person in loco magistri, to have frequent private conversations with each boy, studying his individual temperament, ascertaining his special difficulties and faults, and giving him the necessary instruction and warning. This is not open to the same fatal objection of publicity as the former

32 MORALITY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS li

method ; but it has pecuhar and great dangers of its own. It is, in fact — I do not use the terms in any invidious sense — the system of confession and direction. Now, if this metliod were not earnestly advocated and actually employed in certain schools, not necessarily under these names, it would not be worth while to discuss it. As facts are, however, it may be worth while to point out some of the objections to it.

To obtain a confession from a boy is an easy feat ; but it is to tyrannise over the weak in his hour of weakness. A time will surely come when the boy will repent having given his confidence. It will have weakened him ; for which of us will not admit, in his own case, that he derives strength for action, for self-recovery, for self-respect, from the fact of his sins being known to God only ?

Again, it compels the boy's mind to recur to the subject ; it keeps the fault in view ; it is keeping him in a tainted atmosphere. The boy ought not to be compelled to revert to it. It ignores the one great truth on the whole subject, that the real safety from such sins is always to be found in flight. Temptations of the devil we can fight ; :emptations of the world we can control : but temptations 3f the flesh we must flee from ; and there is no other way 3f deahng with them. A struggling penitent, who is just safe by keeping the whole subject out of his thoughts, is Derforce by such confession reminded of past sensual pleasure, and is weakened sometimes more by the memory ;han he is strengthened by the words of warning. One Nho is not penitent, and not struggling, of course gets harm rnmixed with good.

Further, it is inevitable that such matters would come :o be spoken of with a certain degree of conventionahty, md this would be — indeed, I may truly say, is — most fatal. The tone of its being a matter of course is most deadly. The loss of respect for the master is certain. I attribute nuch of the evil at certain schools to this cause.

These objections would hold, even if the director were exceptionally gifted with sympathy and insight and purity. But what would be the case with the ordinary run of

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schoolmasters ? Even if one could answer or counterbalance these objections, how many men are there whom one could trust on such delicate matters, — trust neither to suggest, nor exaggerate, nor terrify, nor misuse their power, who would cheer and strengthen, and not confuse and paralyse and distress ?

Nor, I may add, do we seem to have the slightest ground of experience in trusting to this method, here, or in other countries. Indeed, the verdict of experience in English schools would be found most unfavourable, as has been reluctantly admitted to me, more than once, by men who know what that experience is.

There may be, and are, cases, usually at a much later age, in which there is unsolicited request for advice. And advice so given may change the current of a life. But, as a general method, it is not less wrong and impracticable than the proposal to give general physiological instruction.

Between these two extremes lies the method which is generally adopted at the Great Schools with more or less of care and completeness, varying from a laissez-faire, which is obtuse and loveless, even where it is not indifferent and coarse, to the most strenuous and effective, though unseen and almost unrecognised, influence. It consists in saying a few private words to boys when they first enter a school, and on other special occasions ; in keeping a close look-out on anything that looks wrong; in associating the elder boys with the master in stopping anything that is low ; and in doing all that may be done to keep up a healthy tone. A very general and vague description of a method, perhaps, scarcely up to the requirements of a scientific society ; depending entirely on the persons who apply the method, and on the spirit in which they apply it.

Now, I think that, with one proviso, of which more will be said presently, this is the right method ; and that the general high character of Public Schools, at the Universities and elsewhere, is due to it; and further, that the schools which fail to deserve this high character fail because they neglect it in some important particular.

Let me go through it with rather more of detail. It is

D very desirable that before a boy leaves home he should be warned that he will meet with boys who have dirty and nasty ways. He must be taught to regard all dirty talk as being low and ungentlemanly, and only fit for cads. He must be told that any offence will be followed by a whipping. It is premature to make a sin of it. So few parents will do this, that it is needful for the schoolmaster to see that it is not wholly omitted. And it must be remembered that it is at the schools for the youngest boys that this is most necessary. It is among young boys, — boys under fourteen, even under eleven, — that evil chiefly breeds. Over and over again, boys coming from middle class and preparatory schools will speak of the astonishing relative purity of the best Public Schools. Incredible as it may seem to those who do not know the best Public Schools, the fact is unquestionably so. The pure-minded boy is exposed to far less annoyance at a good Public School. The coarse is suppressed, intimidated, and sometimes cured. The large class of waverers who have previously joined more or less, not without qualms of conscience and some degree of disgust, in what seemed the fashion, are able to give it up.

The attitude of incessant watchfulness is difficult, because it must not be an attitude of incessant suspicion. The thought ought not to be in our minds. But we ought to watch for the slightest indications of a boy going wrong, — a look, a smile, a gesture, — and help him at the right moment. Many masters would confidently and almost indignantly assert that nothing is wrong in their schools. It is not to such that I should look for a really high standard.

The skill and judgment of a master is perhaps more shown in his power of selecting the right boys to co-operate with them, and in influencing them to do so in the right way, than in anything else. Certainly, without such co-operation, all else is vain. The tone of the school, though it may be suggested and inspired by the masters, must be independent, and dead against the faults we are discussing. It is made so, not simply by arming the older boys with

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authority, though this is much ; it is by giving all the older and leading boys, without saying much to them, the feeling that they are working with the masters, and for the school, on the most important of all points ; it is by trusting the boys, and educating them to be trustworthy.

I need scarcely say that stern treatment of public offences is essential. In no other way can the right public tone be maintained.

(The whole chapter is well worth studying on this question.) They must be got rid of, and got rid of in silence.

The healthier and manlier the general tone of the school, the less power these temptations will exercise. They are bred by indolence, by luxury, by lounging, by swagger, by indifference to games and school interests, by loose literature, by want of discipline, by being bored. I do not mean that either the hard-working boy, or the athlete, or one who is both, is necessarily free from these temptations, and even these faults, but that he has some of the best safeguards and antidotes against them. His mind is occupied ; he is in health ; he has some self-respect. I would say to all parents of day boys as well as boarders, co-operate heartily with the schoolmaster in enforcing school games ; they are essential to health, to the esprit de corps, and to the employment of time. If you keep your little boys away from games on all sorts of frivolous excuses, as they grow up they will not care for games, they will not be induced to join in them, and you will regret and wonder why it should be so, why they have turned out the poor mannish strutting creatures they are. You are exposing them to risks a thousand times worse than taking colds, or getting their shins kicked. Did you ever think what a priceless boon is the innocence of school games as a subject of conversation ? You are perhaps bored by the incessant talk about matches and runs, and place-kicks, and scrimmages ; you think games occupy a disproportionate share of the boy's mind. You may be thankful it is so. What do French boys talk about ? Talk is one of the chief uses of games. The talk about them is more than innocent, — it is a training in politics, loyalty, patriotism, hero-worship, justice. I wish girls could have a little more of such talk. Lawn tennis is doing something for them perhaps.

The free intercourse of masters with their boys,i the genuine and unaffected interest they take in their games and occupations, and the general healthy tone of the masters' society, are of the highest importance. If a master is fast and coarse-minded, or even indifferent on these points, he has mistaken his profession, and the sooner he is got rid of the better.

It will be noticed that I have said little of direct religious motive : that I have laid more stress on the tone of manliness than on that of godliness. And this represents my conviction, after some experience. I have not found, nor have others told me that they have found, that direct religious teaching exercises much permanent influence on young boys in protecting and rescuing them from these faults. There are some who will hear this with surprise, and a sense of despair ; others may listen with something of a sneer. To the first I would say, that each age has to be educated by suitable methods, — that teaching may be good but untimely. It does seem to be indicated by experience that it is better, with young boys, to treat these faults as disgusting than as sinful ; to cure them with " kicks and contempt rather than by prayers and lectures " ; to consider them as unmanly and ungentlemanly rather than as unchristian ; as a disgrace to a school and to self-respect rather than as a defilement of the temple of the Holy Spirit ; and even where boys grow older and begin to know what impurity really means, it is moral repulsion, not religious enthusiasm nor religious terror, that aids them most in resisting temptation. And though it is essential

^ A friend writes to me, ' ' When I first took my house, the worst offender I ever knew said to me of another boy, whom I held up to him as healthy-minded, ' I should have been all right if I had known the

masters as he does.'

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that the atmosphere of the school should be religious, in order that any mode of dealing with the evil should be effective, it is not on the religious side that the evil is best attacked. Further, I would add, that while the number of masters and elder boys who could treat them in the former way is very large, the number who could treat them in the latter way, without some considerable degree of unreality, is extremely small. And if any one doubts still, whether the highest motives would not be the most powerful if they were rightly and strongly brought before the boy at the right time and by the right person, I would ask him to weigh well the additional facts, — that the boys whose temperament specially exposes them to these faults, are usually far from destitute of religious feelings ; that there is and always has been an undoubted coexistence of religiosity and animalism ; that emotional appeals and revivals are very far from rooting out carnal sin ; and that in some places, as is well known, they seem actually to stimulate, even in the present day,, to increased licentiousness ; that, along with an increased immorality in society, has arisen an increased demand for stronger religious excitement ; and that somehow, in our complicated nature, room is found for both ; strange to say, they coexist in the same society, and even in the same individuals.