Education from a national stand-point

Front matter

She

Fa.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Book 1. Education And Selection Fkom The National Point Of View 10

CHAPTER L

Power of Education and of Idea-foeces— Suggestions- Heredity ... ... ... ... ... ,.. 10

CHAPTER IL

Physical Education from the Point of View of Evolution

CHAPTER IIL

The Objects of Intellectual and Moral Education from

THE National Standpoint... ... ... ... 33

CHAPTER IV.

The Selection of Superiorities — Rational Means Available 4]

XVIU CONTENTS.

PAGB

CHAPTER Y.

Utilitarian Education and True National Interests ... 4'5

BOOK 11.

SCIENTIFIC HUMANITIES FROM THE NATIONAL

STANDPOINT 54

Book V. Philosophy, Ethics, And Social Science From

THE NATIONAL STANDPOINT 193

CHAPTER L

Moral and Social Science in the School the only Solution

CHAPTER IL Moral and Civic Instruction ... ... ... ... 204

CHAPTER III.

Historical and Political Instruotion ... ... ... 21S

XX

Conclusion

Appendix I.

Appendix II.

Appendix III.

Index ...

... 268

... 293

... 316

... 323

... 329

EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT.

INTEODUCTION.

A SOCIETY has been formed in France for the promotion of a physical renaissance; it is a matter of general opinion that combination is no less necessary for the promotion of an intellectual and moral renaissance. Educational questions are the order of the day ; rarely have so many books been published with reference to problems in pedagogy. Most of the controversies relative to this vital question of education seem to me to arise from the fact that we fail to reach a sufficiently general point of view, i.e. the national, international, or efven ethnical. Among books recently published and deserving of notice on various grounds, there is, I may almost say, only one in which the author places side by side the two essential factors in this problem — the individual and the race.* On this, as on all great questions of practical philosophy, Guyau has left his mark. His principal claim on our attention will be that he has treated from the " sociological " point of view the problems, not only of

* "Education and Heredity :" Contemporary Science Series.

morals, but also of religion, sesthetics, and education. He has treated the question from the highest standpoint, and has stated it in a strictly scientific form : " Given the hereditary merits and faults of a race, how far can we modify existing heredity by means of education for the benefit of a new heredity ? " For the problem is nothing less than this ; it is not merely a matter of the instruction of individuals, but of the preservation and improvement of the race. Education must therefore be based upon the physiological and moral laws of the culture of races. These laws are not considered unworthy of attention when we are dealing with the breeding of animals; but they are set aside or forgotten when we are dealing with man, "as if the education of humanity only concerned individuals." The ethnical is the true point of view. By means of education we must create such hereditary tendencies as will be useful to the race, both physically and intellectually. True education is that which, instead of sterilizing the brain by the exhaustion of its force, makes it more and more fruitful by the development of varied capacities in the midst of varied environments.

In the following pages I propose to take a more restricted view of the problem than that taken by Guyau ; I shall devote myself in particular to educational questions, which I shall discuss from the national point of view. The nation is an organism endowed with a kind of collective consciousness, although not concentrated in an ego ; I therefore take everything that maintains in a nation continuity of character, mind, habits, and aptitudes — in a word, a national consciousness and a national will — as a form of organic heredity and identity persisting from age to age. That strange saying of old Heraclitus has been rightly applied to the solidarity of the generations of mankind : " The death of the gods is our life ; " i.e., according to ancient modes of speech, we are living on our ancestors, on the moral forces incarnated in the history of our country, as well as on the natural forces incorporated in its chmate and in its soil. In my opinion, the final goal of education is to secure, not only

INTRODUCTION. 3

the development of the race, but also that of our nationality, our native country.

Among the means of attaining this end which we have to consider, the first is selection. The history of humanity exhibits the struggle of races, nationalities, and individuals, not only for existence — in the oft-quoted phraseology of a narrow interpretation of Darwinism — but also for vital progress of every kind, including intellectual, aesthetic, and moral life. Much is said in these days about the struggle for existence. There is a hasty and heedless application to humanity of the laws formulated by Darwin for the animal kingdom. The metamorphoses of selection, as it passes from the domain of brute force to that of intellectual and moral force, are ignored. All the more or less shocking deductions drawn from Darwinism are due to this logical blunder, and consist in the belief that the triumph of the most powerful force is always equivalent to that of the most brutal force. It is of importance, therefore, to note the analogies and differences between natural and social selection ; these I shall attempt to point out. In the first place, we must endeavour to ascertain the true power and limits of education and of instruction, strictly so called ; we shall investigate how far it is true that " ideas lead the world," and how a selection of ideas is primarily affected in the brain by education, i.e. what we may call psychological selection. Then we shall discuss social selection and the conditions under which it will produce such a picked class as is necessary to the progress of the whole race. Here the doctrine of evolution will assist us to determine the most essential objects of that education which has as its aim the perfection of the species.

Having thus laid down our general principles, we shall draw our theoretical and practical inferences as far as reform of the educational systems of Europe is concerned. The more civilization advances, the more pre-eminence lies with everything that is organized, systematized, and co-ordinated in hierarchic order. From the military point of view, for instance, the more numerous the army, the more essential is the unity and subordination of those parts which are distinctive of a Hving being. From the poUtical point of view, it is equally clear that organization is of vast, and so to speak of vital, importance. The danger that, above all others, a democratic nation must avoid is the disintegration of society into units with no immediate concern but self-interest, into individuals to whom social duties and bonds are gradually ceasing to appeal. Is not the same danger to be anticipated in education ? There, as elsewhere, we must battle all the more vigorously agamst anarchy and want of organization, in proportion as the number of subjects of knowledge becomes more numerous and more complex ; science and industry are advancing with such rapid strides that the human brain cannot, save by more and more rigorous discipline, adapt itself to such a variety of laws, theories, and applications. That nation which can introduce into its education the most powerful and the most consolidated organization will, ipso facto, enjoy in the world of intellect a superiority analogous to that of well-organized governments and armies.

Eeform has, so far, been chiefly confined either to the subjects taught or to the methods employed in teaching the various literary and scientific subjects ; no attempt has been made to harmonize and unify education as a whole ; in fact, the systems at present obtaining in Europe do not seem to have found their true centre of gravity. Some want the basis of education to be scientific, others literary ; the latter, again, may be subdivided into the partisans of ancient and of modern languages. In this volume we shall inquire if the link between science and literature is not to be found in the knowledge of man, of society, and of the great laws of the universe, i.e. in morals, social science, and £esthetics — in a word, in philosophy.

This idea is becoming more and more familiar ; of this the recent reforms in education in Italy are a fresh proof. It has already been suggested in France that instead of

INTRODUCTION. 5

being relegated to the last year of school life, the course of ethics, logic, {esthetics, and general philosophy should be introduced, in their more elementary form, as early as the ages of fourteen to sixteen. This new system has just been inaugurated in Italy ; psychology, logic, ethics, and general philosophy are taught in the three highest classes of the lyceums. In France, too, a proposal has been made to include in the teaching of each of the special sciences — physics, physiology, history, etc.— the study of their philosophical principles and general conclusions. The new ItaUan code gives a place, principally in natural science, to general and philosophical questions. This is, then, a first attempt in the direction of a philosophical organization and co-ordination of subjects. But as the code was drawn up in an exclusively positivist spirit, certain principles, which to my mind are essential, have been unwisely sacrificed.

Of one thing, however, we may feel convinced — that a new group of sciences, i,e. social science, is extending its limits, and by the next century will have been awarded the first rank in importance. Too exclusively literary an education having provoked a reaction in favour of science, and scientific education in its tmii having disappointed expectations, we may fairly prophesy that, in the more or less near future, the characteristic feature of education will be the moral and social tendency given from the outset to all subjects and to all methods ; this will ipso facto be system atization instead of the present vicious condition of aff'airs, Avhich is generally known by the barbarous names of " particularizing," or "specializing." The "humanities," in the true sense of the word, which should be based upon the knowledge of man and human societies, will then be brouo-hfe to the front. The humanities, with the philosophy which completes them, form the true and the only liberal education. In each of us must be " a free m.an," who keeps his freedom unimpaired by the ever-increasing servitude of life, able to communicate to industry itself, and to material labour of every kind, something of that " dignity " wliich, according to Plato and Aristotle, " comes with knowledge and thouglit." We must each of us feel that we are citizens ; we must be animated by public spirit, always ready to place the interests of our country above those of self, above our own work and industry, above our business and our wealth. To obtain this twofold result, a liberal education was always considered a sine qua no?i, and it was supposed that for the dominant class it should be as extended in character as possible. I shall endeavour to determine accurately the necessary bases of such an education, truly humane and at the same time national ; for that purpose I shall discuss the problem not merely, as is usually the case, from the standpoint of vague and general pedagogy ; I shall transfer the question to the ground of present reality, into a given environment — the modern — and a given nation — French or English, as the case may be.

A nation, like an individual, has its own instinct and genius.

It has the more or less vague sense of its " mission " to humanity.

If social science rejects every mystical interpretation of the common spirit animating a nation, it by no means rejects the reflected consciousness or spontaneous divination possessed by every nation of the functions which has devolved upon it. History furnishes us with ample proofs of this ; the Jews were not the only people who believed, and rightly believed, that they were chosen to transform the world ; the Greeks considered their mission to be the propagation of the arts and sciences ; Rome claimed the dominion of the world — even when invaded by barbarians she still was queen : and finally, when deprived of her temporal power, she reduced the universe to spiritual servitude by the establishment of the Papacy. The English claim that their destiny is to rule the sea, and to found colonies in distant lands. Americans are fond of representing their country as a theatre for the trial and development of liberty in every form and in every direction of speculative and practical life ;

INTRODUCTION. i

scarcely an American can be found who has not in his mind, in a more or less nebulous form, this idea of illimitable individualism and indefinite expansion. We know the Germany of to-day believes in her scientific and political mission, just as iu the time of Luther she believed in her relio-ious mission. As for France, her belief in the universal triumph of reason, law, and fraternity is a commonplace. France prides herself on being, par excellence, the focus of those ideas and sentiments which in the true sense of the word are humane ; she is the country of " humanity," in the broad sense in which the fifteenth century understood the word. Her classical hterature and art form a literature and an art of an entirely human and universal expansion ; she is pre-eminently the classic land, the land of the " humanities." The first duty of every French government is to maintain, in the education it provides for the nation, the literary and artistic honour of France, and her faith in a profoundly human morality and philosophy.

Above all, a great nation like France must foster the production and selection of the highest genius, or even of simple superiority. How, then, is genius born and developed ? By the combination of three factors : (1) The hereditary transmission of the qualities of the race, and in particular of the family; (2) The ''happy accidents" and peculiar circumstances of spermatic or embryonic life ; (3) The influence of the national environment and of national education. We have no control over the embryo or over those chances which by a precious idiosyncrasy virtually create a genius ; but we can do something, we can even do a great deal, to prepare for the advent of minds of a higher order, by the accumulation of certain qualities in the race, and by the maintenance of that intellectual and aesthetic environment which is, as it were, the vital air of genius.

An evolutionist has justly remarked, a projws of adaptation to environment, that in Greece, where every god^ had his o^\^l temple, every temple its statue, every house its altar, and every altar its minor divinities; in Greece, "where marble was as common as brick in London," and wbere sculptors were as numerous as carpenters, we can understand how a Phidias was born and found admirers, while, on the other hand, he could not have been born in Germania. So in Italy, where from the earliest times nymphs and satyrs have been portrayed, succeeded in later days by Madonnas and St. Sebastians ; where little chapels have always been hung with votive offerings to Yenus Genetrix or to Our Lady of the Sea ; where countless generations of artists decorated the walls of Pompeii, or covered with rapid frescoes the commonest ceilings of Florence and Genoa ; need we wonder that a country, where a lofty level of taste and artistic finish was thus developed, should have produced a Leonardo da Yinci and a Eaphael ? * On the other hand, why has America produced an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Fulton, but no Schiller, Mozart, or Michael Angelo ? The reason is easily discovered both in the hereditary and in the existing national environment. Do we wish France to remain the land of letters, painting, disinterested scientific investigation, and philosophy .? We must be careful lest we reduce the classical elite to a few ; for then the production and selection of genius or simple superiority will be impossible. We want, as I shall show, a field of culture of sufiicient extent for the national mind to expand in every direction of intellectual work — of literature, art, and science. France must be literary, scientific, and artistic, if Frenchmen are to be literary, scientific, and artistic ; if they are to maintain their influence and glory as a nation. If France chooses to become "Americanized," she will perhaps cease to be France, but she will certainly never become an America.

The classics are already the pledge of a certain disinterestedness, of a certain literary taste ; even Latin, " apparently useless," is useful in turning the minds of the young from their immediate or future interests — ^personal interests — in carrying them back to great national and

INTRODUCTION. 9

historical interests, to French literature and to the ancient literature by which it was inspired, to that ancient art from which our modern art still derives its inspiration. That is Gallia Ferennis, beginning with Eome or earlier still, instead of "commencing with the French Eevolution."*

Democracy having already betrayed only too strong a tendency to utilitarianism and industrialism, the State, far from removing the obstacles in the path of all who have not gone through a full course of the " humanities," should, on the contrary, do its utmost to favour the selection and constitution of a really hberal elite; this is its duty and its right, especially in republics, in which, in the interest of all, this guiding influence should be in the hands of men whose minds are of the highest order, who are superior to the interests of the moment, who are least affected by purely utilitarian tendencies, and most capable of perpetuating from generation to generation that historical and permanent national spirit which constitutes the true " national will."

* An allusion to the fanaticism which advocates that school text-books of French history should begin with the French Kevolution. Vide <}uyau's " Education an I Heredity," p. 227 (Tr.).

Chapter I. Power Of Education' And Of Idea-forces— Sugges- Tions— Heredity

The power of instruction and education, denied by some and exaggerated by others, being nothing but the power of ideas and sentiments, it is impossible to be too exact in determining at the outset the extent and limits of this force. This psychological problem is the foundation of pedagogy.

I. The principle I assume at the outset is one that I have developed elsewhere,* that every idea tends to act itself out. If it is an isolated idea, or if it is not counterbalanced by a stronger force, its realization must take place. Thus the principle of the struggle for existence and of selection, taking the latter word in its broadest sense, is in my opinion as applicable to ideas as to individuals and living species ; a selection takes place in the brain to the advantage of the strongest and most exclusive idea, which is thus able to control the whole organism. In particular,

* "Evolutionisrae des idees-forces."

POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FOECES. 11

the child's brain is an arena of conflict for ideas and tlie impnises they inckide ; in the brain a new idea is a new force which encounters the ideas already installed, and the impulses already developed therein. Hence I maintain that education as a whole is a work of intellectual selection. I have elsewhere stated the principal facts that demonstrate the impeUing force of ideas. Assume a mind, as yet a blank, and suddenly introduce into it the representation of any movement, the idea of any action — such as raising the arm. This idea being isolated and unopposed, the wave of disturbance arising in the brain wdll take the direction of the arm, because the nerves terminating in the arm are disturbed by the representation of the arm. The arm will therefore be lifted. Before a movement begins, we must think of this ; now no movement that has taken place is lost ; it is necessarily communicated from the brain to the organs if unchecked by any other representation or impulse. The transmission of the idea to the limbs is inevitable as long as the idea is isolated or unopposed. This I have called the law of idea-forces,* and I think I have satisfactorily explained the curious facts in connection with the impulsive actions of the idea, f The well-known experiments of Chevreul on the " pendule explorateur," and on the divining rod, show that if we represent to ourselves a movement in a certain direction, the hand will finally execute this movement without our consciousness, and so transmit it to the instrument. Table-turning is the realization of the expected movement by means of the unconscious motion of the hands. Thought-reading is the interpretation of imperceptible movements, in which the thought of the subject betrays itself, even without his being conscious of it. In the process that goes on when we are fascinated or are on the point of fainting, a process more obvious in children than in adults, there is an inchoate movement which the paralysis of the will fails to check. When I was a lad,

* " Evolutionisme des idees-forces," bk. iii. f Ibid. bk. iii.

I was once running over a plank across the weir of a river, it never entering my head that I ran any risk of faUing ; suddenly this idea came into play like a force obliquely compounded Avith the straight course of thought which had up to that moment been guiding my footsteps. I felt as if an invisible arm had seized me and was dragging me down. I shrieked and stood trembling above the foaming water until assistance came. Here the mere idea of vertigo produced vertigo. A plank on the ground may be crossed without arousing any idea of falling ; but if it is above a precipice, and we think of the distance below, the impulse to fall is very strong. Even when we are in perfect safety we may feel what is known as the " fascination " of a precipice.* The sight of the gulf below, becoming a fixed idea, produces a resultant inhibition on all other ideas. Temptation, which is always besetting a child because everything is new to it, is nothing but the power of an idea and its motor impulse.

The power of an idea is the greater the more prominently it is singled out from the general content of consciousness. This selection of an idea, which becomes so exclusive that the whole consciousness is absorbed in it, is called mono'ideism. This state is precisely that of a person who has been hypnotised, f What is called hypnotic suggestion is nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of all others, so that it passes into action. Natural somnambulism similarly exhibits the force of ideas ; whatever idea is conceived by the somnambulist, he carries into action. The kind of dream in which children often live is not without analogy to somnambulism. The fixed idea is another instance of the same phenomenon, which is produced in the waking state, and which, when exaggerated, becomes monomania, a kind of morbid monoideism ; children, having very few ideas, would very soon acquire fixed ideas,

* Bain, "Mental Science," p. 91 (2>.).

t " Evolutionisme des idees-forces," bk. iv. Vido Gnyau, " Education and Heredity " (Walter Scott), pp. 14, 23 (Jr.).

POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 13

if it were not for the mobility of attention which the ceaseless variation of the surrounding world produces in them. Thus all the facts grouped nowadays under the name of auto-suggestion may, in my opinion, be explained. Here we shall generalize the law in this form : every idea conceived by the mind is an auto-suggestion, the selective effect of which is only counterbalanced by other ideas producing a different auto-suggestion. This is especially noticeable in the young, who so rapidly carry into action what is passing through their minds.

The force of example, which plays so important a part in education, is likewise reducible to the communicative and selective force of every representation. In fact, we explain in the same way the second form of suggestion, that in which an act is suggested not to one's self, but to others by means of an idea. Perhaps the most interesting part of Guyau's researches is his exhaustive treatment of suggestion and its role in education.* Guyau was, I believe, the first to point out the close analogy between suggestion and instinct, with the possible application of suggestion to moral therapeutics, " as a corrective of abnormal instincts, or as a stimulant of normal instincts which are too weak." " Every suggestion is a nascent instinct wholly created by the hypnotiser." f Since these words were written, the therapeutic results of suggestion have been numerous and important. By suggestion, Doctors Yoisin and Liegeois have cured melancholia, dipsomania, morphinism, drunkenness, and excessive indulgence in tobacco. M. Belboeuf asserts that he has made a timid girl brave. M. Yoisin transformed the character of a woman who was idle and dishonest ; he also claims to have changed a married woman^ who had made domestic life unbearable to her husband, into a gentle and affectionate wife. This would have been a boon to Socrates, for instance. Finally, M. Liebault, of

* Vide " Education and Heredity," pp. 23, et seq. (^Tr.) t Ibid. p. 5 (T/-.)

Nancy, cured a lad of incorrigible idleness for six months.* It is needless to say that Guyau does not advise, and even expressly condemns, any introduction of hypnotism into normal education ; it is far better, as he says, " to leave the boy in idleness than to make him a neuropath." His object in quoting pathological facts is merely for the purpose of deduction as to the normal state. In Guyau's opinion, hypnotic suggestion is nothing but the morbid exaggeration and artificial intensification of suggestive phenomena produced in a state of perfect health.

Normal suggestion, which is the only suggestion that should be used in education, is psychological, moral, and social ; it consists in the transmission from one individual to another of ideas or impelling sentiments, and in the possibility of rendering these ideas or sentiments permanent. We are not, in the normal state, controlled by a particular magnetiser, but it by no means follows that we are nob *' accessible to a multitude of small suggestions, at one time at variance, at another accumulating and producing a very sensible mean eifect." Children, in particular, are open to every suggestion of the environment. Guyau shows that, from the moment it enters into the world, the child's condition may be compared to that of a hypnotized subject. There is the same absence of any ideas of its own, or the same dominance of a single idea. " Everything that the child sees or feels will be a suggestion ; this suggestion will give rise to a habit the effect of which will sometimes persist throughout the whole of life, just as impressions of terror excited in children by nurses may persist." If the introduction of new sentiments is possible by wholly pihysiological means, it should be equally possible by moral psychological means. Hence the importance of the fact that " recent studies in the nervous system seem likely to correct scientific prejudices against the power of education as science becomes more perfect." Suggestion, which

* <' Education and Heredity/' pp. 9, 10 (Tr.).

POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 15

creates artificial instincts capable of counterpoising hereditary instincts, constitutes a new power comparable to heredity ; now education, as Guyau says, " is a totality of co-ordinated and reasoned suggestions, and we can therefore understand the importance and efficacy it may acquire from the physiological and psychological point of view." *

In my opinion, suggestion is only a particular case of the most fundamental law of idea-forces, the law which dominates all pedagogic science, and to which the author of " Education and Heredity " has made in several chapters of that work a very important contribution.

Ideas are sometimes considered of little consequence, and are supposed to have scarcely any influence upon the conduct. On the other hand, the philosophers of the seventeenth century, with Descartes and Pascal, considered, sentiments and passions as indistinct thoughts, as "thoughts, as it were, in process of precipitation." This is true. Beneath, all our sentiments lies a totality of imperfectly analyzed ideas, a swelling stream of crowded and indistinct reasons by the momentum of which we are carried away and swept along. Inversely, sentiments underlie all our ideas ; they smoulder in the dying embers of abstractions. Even language has a power because it arouses all the sentiments which it condenses in a formula ; the mere names " honour " and " duty " arouse infinite echoes in the consciousness. At the name of " honour " alone, a legion of images is on the point of surging up ; vaguely, as with eyes open in the dark, we see all the possible witnesses of our acts, from father and mother to friends and fellow-countrymen ; further, if our imagination is vivid enough, we can see those great ancestors who did not hesitate under similar circumstances. " We must ; forward ! " We feel that we are enrolled in an army of gallant men ; the whole race, in its most heroic representatives, is urging us on. There is a social and even an historical element beneath moral ideas.