An enquiry concerning the nature, end and practicability of a course of philosophical education

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CONCERNING THE

NATURE, END, AND PRACTICABILITY

Part II

Of Abuses and Delects in Education, - - 38 CHAP. 1. Of abuses and defects of Education in

respect to morals, - 38

CHAP. 2 Of P ejudice, - 50

CHAP 3. Of Example, - - - - 60 CHAP. 4. Of remissness in the impression and

inculcation of principles, - - - 72

part in.

Of the remedies for the abuses and defects of Education, - 89

CHA P I. Of circumspection on the incipient progression of the understanding, - - 89

CHA*. LI Of th e manage ry if the imitative fa-

CHAP. III. Of the reversion of habits, - - 124

CHAP, 4* Of improvement of Institutes, - 152

IV

Chapter I

Of the origin and use of the word Education.

The Word Education is derived from the Latin word Educo, which signified to instruct and train. Its immediate formation is out of the verb educate, which is expressive of the Latin verb educo, and signifies the same thing. This same word, Education, is also French ; that is, is used by the French for the same purpose as by the English. The idea of a particular action, is pre-esistent to that of a species of action, because the latter requires an additional act of the mind, subsequent to the perception of that particular, whereby it ascendantly operates thereon, and modifies its particular ideas, from comparisons and references of which, it forms separate notions : therefore the names of species of actions, are derived from the verbs that signify the particular actions of which those species are. The Greeks by the word &Xa,mcS) expressed much of what is in the power of our verb educate* Almost every moral word has had, primitively, a mechanical s.ense, from which it has been transferred to its moral use, by reason of analogy or a habit of oratorical allusion. And this is the case with this tribe of 1 words I am speaking of. The ideas of planting and nourishing were anterior to that of instilling knowledge and persuasions of mind. This word has been used to some variety of signification ; yet is less perplexedly ambiguous than many other moral words are by arbitrary use. It was formerly understood to signify the bringing up of children ; and afterwards, the art of bringing up children: while, in the circle of philosophical propriety, it signified the training of young persons by methodical exercises, to certain investments of their intellective and moral capacities, separate from, and over and above, what the progress of nature itself independently of any intentional direction, would carry them to, in the same time.

The word is sometimes, now, in vulgar converse, employed to denote discriminately that part of education wfiich ig drawn from seminaries, whether common schools, academies, or universities. Thus, one is said to have an ordinary education, a liberal education, a public education, or, but a common education . and in a more partial appropriation it is frequently even confined to the privileges of college acquirements; as when of a candidate for an influential post, is said he has no education. It seems, in frequent use, to mean merely an extensive knowledge of the ways of the world, joined with the fashionable or fine accomplishments, such as decorous moving, — elegant speaking or writing, dancing, &c. which set a man off in the view of the croud : as who should say, he is a prudent, upright, and intelligent man, but has no education ? And there is scarce any remark much more common in tattling circles than that such an one has a fine education, but he is a very passionate man, and addicted to gaming, to drunkenness, to extortion. Moreover, common observation evinces that in the general acceptation of the word, as it is used among the commonalty, the idea of moral improvement does not participate in the least. It now properly stands, (in its philosophical use) for " that series of operations by which the developement and cultivation of the faculties and affections of mankind are carried on and fashioned, between earliest infancy and the period when they are considered qualified to take part in active life."

The idea which I shall 'endeavour to uniformly denote by this word in the progress of the following discourse, is this, viz. a superhuiuction of knowledge, and of habit to the capacities of percipient beings: or in other words, the superinduction of science and art* For whether we form opinions, or add absolute knowledge and certainty, there is still a superinduction of light, and real knowledge, in those views the mind has of the relations of the ideas it compares together as proofs whether probable or demonstrative; and all art is but aptness and facility either in thinking or moving, acquired by repetition and custom. Whether men instruct themselves, by forming opinions and accumulating knowledge in their own minds, by their own independent voluntary exertions; or inform the minds of others; it is all the same sort of thing, and fit to be denoted by the same general sign.

For whether I form habits and ideas in my own mind or in another's, it is still but education : it is a voluntary teaching and learning of something: and all this too, whether they be mankind or beings of any other species of reasoning animals that from observation, experience, or else either from some hereditary or traditionary impressions of particular propensities or principles, form in themselves or others certain habits of thinking or muscular moving. Many deny that brutes possess the power of reasoning.

Notwithstanding, numerous instances of deliberate trains of motions and other signs observable in several quadrupeds and birds, indicative of a comparison or balancing of what they inwardly feel or perceive, approximating to the security of good and the avoidance of evil, all indubitably analogous to what in ourselves is consecutive to reasoning, prove almost to a demonstration that they do possess that faculty ; which yet I am far from supposing them capable of using about general orabstract ideas, of which in fact 1 deem them not susceptible ; abstraction seeming to be the settled boundary between man and all other species of animals, as perception is supposed to be that which divides the animal from the vegetable kingdom : since we can trace no signs of their separating their ideas from the connections of particular existence, and foiming representatives of variously situated things, by exclusive consideration of a common property. Their reasoning, therefore is always about particulars: hence, of those animals who construct means of security or shelter, each species usually builds its habitations in one form, and of one sort of materials ; yet there are those who maintain that all the sublimest artifices of brutes, are carried on by a blind unconscious impulse proceeding from their internal conformation, whereby desire and aversion act in them without the perceptions of good and evil in those things to or from which they propel them, and of the tendency of their movement to compass the one or avoid the other.

Some one will ask, what induces the infant bee, in its first flight, to seek the honied flower r In reply to which, I would ask, what makes the human infant seek the breast whence it draws its sustenance? Both are led by perception of pleasing sensations excited by those objects. The inexperienced is capable of no better reasoning than this ; to pursue that which appears the source of good, — the greatest good they can conceive. But it is well known, brutes come into the world nearer maturity than the human species. The lives of many of them are short ; they have but little progress to make, to arrive at all the improve* merit they are capable of. The insect tribes, in particular, have but a momentary advance (as it were) in increase either of their capacity of body or of mind. It will be sufficient for all the purposes of this place to take notice of some instances of communicating the knowledge of expedients and signs, exemplified in several birds ; since nothing is better known than that several sorts of animals do progress to some degree of proficiency as they advance in age ; that they have more experimental knowledge not only, but are more apt in their observance, and in the exercise of their several faculties, when they are three years old than when one day old ; and daily observation as well as experiment teaches us that dogs, monkies, elephants, horses, cats, and the like, may, by discipline and culture, be brought to acquire a variety of habits. Birds of passage make use of signs to communicate to their young their ideas of changing, and their desire to change, their place. The turkey and hen have an artificial language of sounds though not what we call articulate, the significancy of which, is certainly trans* fused to the comprehension of their rising offspring by a constant practice that produces a habit of associating certain emotions and perceptions with those determinate sounds ; for they act in invariable consistency with such trains of impressions, and seem to be perfectly sensible of an approach of danger, by its being intimated to them by a particular sound made by the parent or leader of the flock. Other ideas also are regularly communicated amongst them. Birds of passage, as wild geese and others, that divide their lives between regions a thousand miles asunder, communicate, by practice and habit, the expectation and desire of changing their situations at certain seasons. Parrots have learned articulation, and even verbal reasoning. Most of the larger animals we are acquainted with here, have artificial language. Artificial

*i language supposes desire to communicate ideas, thoughts, impressions of something felt or perceived ; and it also supposes habit; for without this, there would be no permanent connection between the sign and thing signified. So then brutes are capable of education, passively and actively, in the proportion of the extent of their capacities, and the number of their faculties.

Education, I take then may be justly defined a superinduction of knowledge and habit to the capacities of percipient beings. For whether in this operation there is induced absolute knowledge either sensitive, demonstrative, or intuitive ; probable opinion ; aptness or facility in any mode of motion ; there is still in all this business, voluntary exertion, and (consecutively to such exertion) something added which existed not there before There is one objection which I am aware awaits this use of the word I have been defining, and that is, that according to my definition, Education may be either a good thing or a bad one : knowledge and habit being equally the one appropriable, the other attributable to maleficent and beneficent purposes. I answer, habits may be bad or good; but knowledge is not, cannot be bad (of itself); knowledge of evil and good being essential to virtue. Habit is called bad (I speak of moral good and evil in the actions of asocial agent) only as the voluntary action whereof it implies a quality or relation, proceeds from bad motives or subserves a maleficent purpose And the superinduction of either the one or the other is bad no otherwise than as those divers modes which go to constitute this, are so, in reference to some paramount concern. A habit is reckoned a bad or a good habit as it is a habit of a bad or a good action. And this is the criterion of a good or bad Education; of right Education, or wrong, perverted, abused, or misguided Education. Again ; every tiling in the world btcomes bad by being perverted and turned to bad uses : and thus knowledge, genius, health, strength, and all the pre-eminent talents and privileges wherein men transcend brutes, may be made evils and sources of misery to our own and other species. And, if I may be permitted to speak so boldly, if mankind had never had any experience at all of the malign effects of vicious habits, in destroying safety, health, quiet, &c. I know not how they would have come to fully comprehend the excellence of virtue. It may furthermore be said, that the essence of this definition simply implies the addition of something to a system, which it is capable of receiving. Let us see whether this addition of something competible to the natural wants and aptitudes of a being, be an improvement of that system or not ; whether this be improving, ameliorating, helping a system towards its designed end or not. And, for this, it seems rational to conclude that knowledge and facility are an improvement of an intelligent free agent Whereupon I say, in another view of the subject I don't know how to get rid of this definition on account of the following considerations :

1. If man was endued with the capacity of knowledge, with the design that he should acquire knowledge, and with the power of beginning motion that he should act, it is evident that if he acquires knowledge by means of this capacity, and habit by means of a practical exertion of those powers of action he possesses, the acquisition of both the one and the other of these is an improvement of his system; inasmuch as it is the immediate accomplishment of designs apparent in his construction.

2. The ultimate end of nature, in the construction of man, wherein he is invested with progressive powers, seems to comprehend these two ideas, preservation of existence, and ^consummation of enjoyment. Now, in the way to this end lie knowledge and habit :

and these are indispensable to its attainment. The dispansion of the natural powers of man, therefore,by the superinduction of these two properties, is improving It is essential to a free agent to be susceptible of evil as well as good. Now, this susceptibility, in itself, is not a bad thing, any more than liberty, will, understanding, and judgment, are such; it being necessary to the first of these, and originating to the others matter of exercise. But the use (or rather the abuse) of our faculties, is that to which this epithet properly belongs.

3. Using the word in this latitude of sense, places it upon that bottom which gives all their signihcancy to those very common observations in the mouths of the populace, which keep up a distinction of the thing into good and bad, which being relative terms, I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of good Edu* cation, unless there may be the reverse, or something which in one comparative view or other, passes for it. And, since any thing that is designed for common use, should be represented in a common way, it seemed to me that the dimensive term to the subject of a communication intended for the benefit of all parts of a community, ought to be used in the most general sense that term has been usually understood in, that the yulgar comprehending the elementary ideas upon which the rest depend, may be capable of applying it, to the designed end. A superinduction of knowledge and habit to the capacities of percipient beings, I call Education. And this I shall consider only in its application to the human species.

CHAPTER II. Division of the Subject

Education, in this comprehensive sense of the word, I distinguish into adventitious arid systematical. Adventitious Education is that wherein by an uncontroulcd course of occurrences, light, and knowledge of things physical and moral, is naturally accumulated, and habits gradually formed, without any intent extension of the voluntary power to a regular catenation of instituted means to form these upon a studied plan ; and herein the creature seems, in general, passive. When I call Education systematical, certain set of instituted means or causes is laid out and applied to the special purpose of bringing about such an effect as the qualifying of the capacries of rationale with certain habits and views. This is a science and an art. Asa science it comprises the knowledge of the suitable means to the end ; as an art, the rules and measures of the use of them. This is a momentous project in social life ; and, properly, embraces the teaching of natural, moral, and i aticval philosophy ; that is to say, the regular training of the intellectual powers, the furnishing of knowledge and just views of physical existences ; the forming of just combinations of ideas of moral modes and relations ; forming habits of good moral actions whether of voluntary thinking or muscular motion; and the investiture of such valuable arts and trades as are respectively necessary or fit for the condition of each being included in the sphere of its designed operation The execution of this im-

Sortant purpose, should take its rise in moulding the elicate minds of infants. The greatest and most indispensable concernment of this purpose is with association of ideas. Association of ideas influences all moral productions in the world. All that is consecutive to the act of willing, in the universal world, is eminently influenced if not altogether controuled, hy associated ideas. Those associations which are formed in infancy, are more durable and invetet. 4 tely efficient than any other. The first step, then, in this business, is the forming and regulating of associate ideas in the tender minds of infants : the t second is to gradually unfold to their apprehensions, just views of natural realities, the third, to conduct the use of their organs of sound to proper articulation ; and the fourth is to form good habits of voluntary action conformably to the purposes of social virtue, under a controuling discipline through means of practical repetition which is the natural rise of all habit. This last should also include the incipient approximation to such associate mechanical movements as are connected with the designed or most proper occupation or art of livelihood, contemplated as a fixture of their future existence on the stage of action. Thus much is comprehended in what is to be done to infants. If we except the conduct of rudimental articulation which is very rarely protracted beyond childhood, this same round is to be trodden in youth, in manhood, that is, in each successive stage of the life and experience of the intellectual being, with an extension aua complication of each part of the process, according to the progressive amplification of the capacity by experience and use.

For, whether we teach ourselves, or teach our fellow beings, in infancy, in youth, or in manhood, it is but to do either or each of these things upon a more or less extended scale, namely, to form right associations of ideas or perceptions, winch are to govern the prevailing motives of the voluntary power ; to store the mind with knowledge and proofs ; to conduct the organs of speech to the habit of forming proper sounds to communicate ideas to others ; to form habits of good actions, to wit, such habits of associate movements in the muscular organs as agree with, and are congenially applicative of, good purposes, or in other words, purposes of social virtue, which are no other than purposes of an equitable diffusion of the enjoyment of existence ; and to form habits of particular mechanical movements which are to serve as means of life and comfort. All which being done, Education is completed : which yet seldom is finished in the life of man; every day being sufficient to bring forth some new knowledge ; and men being beset with such a variety of temptations, the multitude going into such a maze of erroneous mo x , ements, are always susceptive to make or amend some habit. For I am inclined to think it is possible for a man to learn something every day he lives. Yet this I would not confine to those different perceptions of external things which are perpetually varying around him, according to the seasons, change of place, climate, &c. but I am persuaded the new associations of ideas, and new trains of thought, which may take their rise from the successive transfigurations of his environing scene of sensation, wherewith he is mechanically affected, besides being in themselves subjects of actual speculative knowledge, may evince physical and moral truths of a more or less general and important nature, whereon he may frame new observations, of practical benefit to himself and others.

" With the ancient is wisdom, and with length of days, understanding." Old age has a preeminent claim to proficiency in science and art, by the exclusive advantage of long experience. Experiment is a test which substantiates as many axioms in some branches of lore, as demonstration does in others. Those in which it has the more conspicuous prevalence, and is most usually indispensable, are morality, medicine and chymistry. Handicraft, mechanics, medicine, and chymistry, owe their intire structure to experiment. Several races of inferior animals have made considerable advance in arts of sustenance and defence, which certainly has not been so much by the aid of the operations of reflection, as by experiment. This is not saying that grammar and music, which are almost entirely made up of experienced concurrences either of general customs, or events which are the effects following certain relations of sounds, do not depend as much on experiment as almost any other. Now young folks have experience as well as old : but they have not so long experience. Not so long a course of repetition of perceptions, which substantiates the validity of this sort of knowledge. An effect may fail, after one or two instances: but after a great number of returns of the same appearance upon the same conflux of circumstances, we feel sure that such is the invariable effect of such a cause, and that the same thing will always operate in the like way. And because old people have had the opportunity of observing more instances of this kind, and have seen some things through a longer course of repetitious operations, they are said to possess greater treasures of wisdom than the young. But to return : since the drift of Education proximately terminates in things to be known and things to be done, (for where we have not certain knowledge of the existence of things without and separate from the understanding, we have yet certain knowledge of a certain degree of

{probability or improbability thereof, and certain knowedge that it is prudent to conduct in a certain manner in consequence of it;) since in furnishing the mind with these materials of action, we can do nothing more than either to introduce ideas or appearances of things into it, or, when they are there, so to connect two or more of them together as to make their re concurrence or consecution incident, or else to make one person capable of transfusing the experience of his awn mind info that of another, which affords great furtherance to men's improvement in knowledge; and since to accomplish men for doing whit is fit by them to be done, is but, by connecting the motions of two or more sets of fibres or muscles, setting them into a course of repetition and continuing that repetition, to establish habits of their associate motions catenated to volition; of which, it being something conspicuously different, still, to establish those general movements which implying the idea of sympathy, form what is called moral character, from establishing those particular knacks called urts and trades ; it is evident that the whole compass of human Education, may be divided into these five parts or processes, viz :

J. Direction and establishment of associations between ideas, whereby we make some apt to accompany or succeed each other rather than others. I mention this first in order, because over the first ideas infants receive, we have no controul : so that before we can dictate their impressions or stock their minds with, ideas of our own choice, they already have perceptions and notices of things, within their apprehensions, which being prone variously to combine by the intervention of pleasure or pain or some peculiar emotions, into very odd groups, call upon our circumspection to set those associations right. Thus, the idea of pain should be associated with that of the touch of burning matter in the relation of cause and effect, instead of pleasure, which attends the perception of light and a due degree of heat, although these may originate in the same substance at a proper distance ; the idea of misery, accompanied by emotion of horror, with that of disobedience to parents, in the same relation ;— until, by following a gradation of this sort of natural connec- S tions, we come at length to associate the idea of the highest degree of enjoyment the creature is capable of comprehending, with that of gratitude. The relation of cause and effect is grounded in the natural constitution of things; being, properly, of the class called natural relation; and the association is unavoidable when the subjects of it are discerned. But all these processes are done promiscuously in youth and in manhood ; so that the times of perfecting each of these branches of human qualifications, are as various as the conditions of the individuals to be qualified.

This is a delicate process ; and is not without its difficulties too ; for although by dint of a careful reflection we can readily discover and rectify any anomalies that take place in our own trains of thought; yet in the supervision of others' we are fain to be guided altogether by the assumed representativeness of signs, which, in the case of infants, being indeterminate, and in some measure capricious, we must be often at a loss. This part cannot be too much studied. A right understanding of the nature of association, in the abstract, will do much towards qualifying one for the conducting of every part of Education. For, whether considered as influencing the movements of the various fibres in the system, or making its appearance in the modification of our bare perceptions in a metaphysical view, it is a principle upon which every part of the work more or less immediately depends. Associations, in the human constitution, are of three kinds : 1. Association of ideas one with another; 2. Association of ideas with other fibrous movements; and S. Association of other fibrous movements one with another. The first includes our speculative opinions and persuasions; the second our passions ; and the third our customary nervous and muscular motions. Of associations of ideas, there are three sorts: contiguity, causation, and resemblance. The first of these sorts is a connection of ideas of qualities co-existing in the same subject; of the ideas of objects perceived at the same time, or of events happening at the same place.

The second represents the union of the ideas of effect and cause, one of which cannot make its appearance without suggesting the other : and the idea of an j object considered as an effect, has always along with it, an idea [however indeterminate) of an object that is considered as its cause. The third is a connection of like ideas, or of ideas that have a likeness or coincidence, in any of their parts : in which case, one naturally exciting the other, thence arises a concomitance. Of either one or the other of these sorts, all are yet distinguishable into general or implicit associations, and individual or definite associations. All our associations of ideas mainly resolve themselves into two kinds or allotments which are distinguished merely by the quantity of the ideas themselves, as they are general ideas or particular ones ; whence they may be termed general or implicit associations, and definite associations. Instances to exemplify these kinds, are observable in all parts of common life. Some implicit associations are derived from definite ones: that is, some associations being at first definite and particular, do afterwards, by continuance, and re* peated coalescence of analogous ideas, become general and implicit. Every association which is circumscribed to a particular person or place, or other object as an individual, is a definite association : as the association of the idea of superior excellence with the appearance of one particular person, the association of the idea of innocence, or of deep wisdom, with that of a particular place ; of that of a certain tune with a particular tree, field, or carriage, &c.

Now in these instances, the person, the place, the tree, &c. are the principals ; and the others are the adjunctives : for we may observe that almost everv such combination has two links, the primary, and the secondary or sub' ordinate ; and that whatever number of ideas is comprised in each, the former usually constitutes that to which the latter is attributed as a quality, affection, incident, or accompaniment : and now it is sufficient to make any association implicit, that the principal is an abstract idea, even if the other part be & particular idea- That which being first produced to perception, fcuggests the other, or introduces it into the mind, and without vvhich it would not have been suggested and induced, may be called the principal; and this, the primary link in the connection. A tree, a carriage, a name, a place, a person, considered as individuals, are particular ideas. But, a man with a certain fashion oi clress, dialect, or gait ; a tree of certain species ; v s'ujpe or structure of a house ; a manner of walking ; ^ tone ; a manner of speaking, are abstract ideas. Implicit associations, then, (by which I mean such as imptl a reference to other particular objects than that v-'mii in any present instance principally excites the understanding; with which particulars the adjunctive TmS an equal aptness to combine) may be furthermore distinguished into those wherein abstract ideas only are associated together, and those wherein particular ideas are associated with abstract ones. Subject to a correspondent subdivision are also definite associations, that is, into associations of particulars with particulars, and of particulars with generals ; the generic distinction adhering to the principals, as they are respectively abstract or particular. If giving the first occasion to the entrance of an idea by way of suggestion, is that which defines the principal, it will be ea -y to distinguish associations by these measures : and if continuance and repetition cause definite associations to grow into implicit Opes, it will be easy to see that they partake ot the nature of habit, and consequently, as such, are subject to the influence of intenlional direction. Some implicit associations are more general than others, as some ideas are more abstracted than others. Some examples of this kind of associations, are what follow :