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The Pleasures of Life

S >> Sir John Lubbock >> The Pleasures of Life




Again, when we contemplate the grandeur of science, if we transport
ourselves in imagination back into primeval times, or away into the
immensity of space, our little troubles and sorrows seem to shrink into
insignificance. "Ah, beautiful creations!" says Helps, speaking of the
stars, "it is not in guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but
out of the dark waters of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to
ourselves the most of your significance." They teach, he tells us
elsewhere, "something significant to all of us; and each man has a whole
hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and befriend him."

There is a passage in an address given many years ago by Professor Huxley
to the South London Working Men's College which struck me very much at the
time, and which puts this in language more forcible than any which I could
use.

"Suppose," he said, "it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune
of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or
losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to
be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces?
Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to
scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or the State which allowed its
members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is a very
plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness
of every one of us, and more or less of those who are connected with us,
do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely
more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been
played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two
players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the
pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what
we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from
us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we
know to our cost that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest
allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are
paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity which with the strong shows
delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste,
but without remorse."

I have elsewhere endeavored to show the purifying and ennobling influence
of science upon religion; how it has assisted, if indeed it may not claim
the main share, in sweeping away the dark superstitions, the degrading
belief in sorcery and witchcraft, and the cruel, however well-intentioned,
intolerance which embittered the Christian world almost from the very days
of the Apostles themselves. In this she has surely performed no mean
service to religion itself. As Canon Fremantle has well and justly said,
men of science, and not the clergy only, are ministers of religion.

Again, the national necessity for scientific education is imperative. We
are apt to forget how much we owe to science, because so many of its
wonderful gifts have become familiar parts of our everyday life, that
their very value makes us forget their origin. At the recent celebration
of the sexcentenary of Peterhouse College, near the close of a long
dinner, Sir Frederick Bramwell was called on, some time after midnight, to
return thanks for Applied Science. He excused himself from making a long
speech on the ground that, though the subject was almost inexhaustible,
the only illustration which struck him as appropriate under the
circumstances was "the application of the domestic lucifer to the bedroom
candle." One cannot but feel how unfortunate was the saying of the poet
that

"The light-outspeeding telegraph
Bears nothing on its beam."

The report of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, which has
recently been issued, teems with illustrations of the advantages afforded
by technical instruction. At the same time, technical training ought not
to begin too soon, for, as Bain truly observes, "in a right view of
scientific education the first principles and leading examples, with
select details, of all the great sciences, are the proper basis of the
complete and exhaustive study of any single science." Indeed, in the words
of Sir John Herschel, "it can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the
attention of the student of Nature, that there is scarcely any natural
phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained in all its
circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences."
The most important secrets of Nature are often hidden away in unexpected
places. Many valuable substances have been discovered in the refuse of
manufactories; and it was a happy thought of Glauber to examine what
everybody else threw away. There is perhaps no nation the future happiness
and prosperity of which depend more on science than our own. Our
population is over 35,000,000, and is rapidly increasing. Even at present
it is far larger than our acreage can support. Few people whose business
does not lie in the study of statistics realize that we have to pay
foreign countries no less than £140,000,000 a year for food. This, of
course, we purchase mainly by manufactured articles. We hear now a great
deal about depression of trade, and foreign, especially American,
competition, which, let me observe, will be much keener a few years hence,
when the United States have paid off their debt, and consequently reduced
taxation.

But let us look forward a hundred years--no long time in the history of a
nation. Our coal supplies will then be greatly diminished. The population
of Great Britain doubles at the present rate of increase in about fifty
years, so that we should, if the present rate continues, require to import
over £400,000,000 a year in food. How, then, is this to be paid for? We
have before us, as usual, three courses. The natural rate of increase may
be stopped, which means suffering and outrage; or the population may
increase, only to vegetate in misery and destitution; or, lastly, by the
development of scientific training and appliances, they may probably be
maintained in happiness and comfort. We have, in fact, to make our choice
between science and suffering. It is only by wisely utilizing the gifts of
science that we have any hope of maintaining our population in plenty and
comfort. Science, however, will do this for us if we will only let her.
She may be no Fairy Godmother indeed, but she will richly endow those who
love her.

That discoveries, innumerable, marvellous, and fruitful, await the
successful explorers of Nature no one can doubt. What would one not give
for a Science primer of the next century? for, to paraphrase a well-known
saying, even the boy at the plough will then know more of science than the
wisest of our philosophers do now. Boyle entitled one of his essays "Of
Man's great Ignorance of the Uses of Natural Things; or that there is no
one thing in Nature whereof the uses to human life are yet thoroughly
understood"--a saying which is still as true now as when it was written.
And, lest I should be supposed to be taking too sanguine a view, let me
give the authority of Sir John Herschel, who says: "Since it cannot but be
that innumerable and most important uses remain to be discovered among the
materials and objects already known to us, as well as among those which
the progress of science must hereafter disclose, we may hence conceive a
well-grounded expectation, not only of constant increase in the physical
resources of mankind, and the consequent improvement of their condition,
but of continual accession to our power of penetrating into the arcana of
Nature and becoming acquainted with her highest laws."

Nor is it merely in a material point of view that science would thus
benefit the nation. She will raise and strengthen the national, as surely
as the individual, character. The great gift which Minerva offered to
Paris is now freely tendered to all, for we may apply to the nation, as
well as to the individual, Tennyson's noble lines:--

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control:
These three alone lead life to sovereign power,
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for), but to live by law;
Acting the law we live by without fear."

"In the vain and foolish exultation of the heart," said John Quincy Adams,
at the close of his final lecture on resigning his chair at Boston, "which
the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite, the pensive portress
of Science shall call you to the sober pleasures of her holy cell. In the
mortification of disappointment, her soothing voice shall whisper serenity
and peace. In social converse with the mighty dead of ancient days, you
will never smart under the galling sense of dependence upon the mighty
living of the present age. And in your struggles with the world, should a
crisis ever occur, when even friendship may deem it prudent to desert you,
when priest and Levite shall come and look on you and pass by on the other
side, seek refuge, my unfailing friends, and be assured you shall find it,
in the friendship of Laelius and Scipio, in the patriotism of Cicero,
Demosthenes, and Burke, as well as in the precepts and example of Him
whose law is love, and who taught us to remember injuries only to forgive
them."

Let me in conclusion quote the glowing description of our debt to science
given by Archdeacon Farrar in his address at Liverpool College--testimony,
moreover, all the more valuable, considering the source from which it
comes.

"In this great commercial city," he said, "where you are surrounded by the
triumphs of science and of mechanism--you, whose river is ploughed by the
great steamships whose white wake has been called the fittest avenue to
the palace front of a mercantile people--you know well that in the
achievements of science there is not only beauty and wonder, but also
beneficence and power. It is not only that she has revealed to us infinite
space crowded with unnumbered worlds; infinite time peopled by unnumbered
existences; infinite organisms hitherto invisible but full of delicate and
iridescent loveliness; but also that she has been, as a great Archangel of
Mercy, devoting herself to the service of man. She has labored, her
votaries have labored, not to increase the power of despots or to add to
the magnificence of courts, but to extend human happiness, to economize
human effort, to extinguish human pain. Where of old, men toiled, half
blinded and half naked, in the mouth of the glowing furnace to mix the
white-hot iron, she now substitutes the mechanical action of the viewless
air. She has enlisted the sunbeam in her service to limn for us, with
absolute fidelity, the faces of the friends we love. She has shown the
poor miner how he may work in safety, even amid the explosive fire-damp of
the mine. She hits, by her anaesthetics, enabled the sufferer to be hushed
and unconscious while the delicate hand of some skilled operator cuts a
fragment from the nervous circle of the unquivering eye. She points not to
pyramids built during weary centuries by the sweat of miserable nations,
but to the lighthouse and the steamship, to the railroad and the
telegraph. She has restored eyes to the blind and hearing to the deaf. She
has lengthened life, she has minimized danger, she has controlled madness,
she has trampled on disease. And on all these grounds, I think that none
of our sons should grow up wholly ignorant of studies which at once train
the reason and fire the imagination, which fashion as well as forge, which
can feed as well as fill the mind."

[1] Byron.

[2] Emerson.

[3] H. Smith.




CHAPTER X.

EDUCATION.


"No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the
vantage ground of truth."--BACON.


"Divine Philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns."--MILTON.


It may seem rather surprising to include education among the pleasures of
life; for in too many cases it is made odious to the young, and is
supposed to cease with school; while, on the contrary, if it is to be
really successful it must be suitable, and therefore interesting, to
children, and must last through life. The very process of acquiring
knowledge is a privilege and a blessing. It used to be said that there was
no royal road to learning; it would be more true to say that the avenues
leading to it are all royal.

"It is not," says Jeremy Taylor, "the eye that sees the beauties of
heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music, or the glad tidings
of a prosperous accident; but the soul that perceives all the relishes of
sensual and intellectual perceptions: and the more noble and excellent the
soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions. And if a child
behold the rich ermine, or the diamonds of a starry night, or the order of
the world, or hears the discourses of an apostle; because he makes no
reflex act on himself and sees not what he sees, he can have but the
pleasure of a fool or the deliciousness of a mule."

Herein lies the importance of education. I say education rather than
instruction, because it is far more important to cultivate the mind than
to store the memory. Studies are a means and not an end. "To spend too
much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is
affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a
scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience.... Crafty
men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them." [1]

Moreover, though, as Mill says, "in the comparatively early state of human
development in which we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that
entireness of sympathy with all others which would make any real
discordance in the general direction of their conduct in life impossible,"
yet education might surely do more to root in us the feeling of unity with
our fellow-creatures. At any rate, if we do not study in this spirit, all
our learning will but leave us as weak and sad as Faust.

"I've now, alas! Philosophy,
Medicine and Jurisprudence too,
And to my cost Theology,
With ardent labor studied through,
And here I stand, with all my lore
Poor fool, no wiser than before." [2]

Our studies should be neither "a couch on which to rest; nor a cloister in
which to promenade alone; nor a tower from which to look down on others;
nor a fortress whence we may resist them; nor a workshop for gain and
merchandise; but a rich armory and treasury for the glory of the creator
and the ennoblement of life." [3]

For in the noble words of Epictetus, "you will do the greatest service to
the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls
of the citizens: for it is better that great souls should dwell in small
houses rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses."

It is then of great importance to consider whether our present system of
education is the one best calculated to fulfil these great objects. Does
it really give that love of learning which is better than learning itself?
Does all the study of the classics to which our sons devote so many years
give any just appreciation of them; or do they not on leaving college too
often feel with Byron--

"Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so!"

Too much concentration on any one subject is a great mistake, especially
in early life. Nature herself indicates the true system, if we would but
listen to her. Our instincts are good guides, though not infallible, and
children will profit little by lessons which do not interest them. In
cheerfulness, says Pliny, is the success of our studies--"studia
hilaritate proveniunt"--and we may with advantage take a lesson from
Theognis, who, in his Ode on the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, makes
the Muses sing:

"What is good and fair,
Shall ever be our care;
Thus the burden of it rang,
That shall never be our care,
Which is neither good nor fair.
Such were the words your lips immortal sang."

There are some who seem to think that our educational system is as good as
possible, and that the only remaining points of importance are the number
of schools and scholars, the question of fees, the relation of voluntary
and board schools, etc. "No doubt," says Mr. Symonds, in his _Sketches in
Italy and Greece_, "there are many who think that when we not only
advocate education but discuss the best system we are simply beating the
air; that our population is as happy and cultivated as can be, and that no
substantial advance is really possible. Mr. Galton, however, has expressed
the opinion, and most of those who have written on the social condition of
Athens seem to agree with him, that the population of Athens, taken as a
whole, was as superior to us as we are to Australian savages."

That there is, indeed, some truth in this, probably no student of Greek
history will deny. Why, then, should this be so? I cannot but think that
our system of education is partly responsible.

Manual and science teaching need not in any way interfere with instruction
in other subjects. Though so much has been said about the importance of
science and the value of technical instruction, or of hand-training, as I
should prefer to call it, it is unfortunately true that in our system of
education, from the highest schools downward, both of them are sadly
neglected, and the study of language reigns supreme.

This is no new complaint. Ascham, in _The Schoolmaster_, long ago lamented
it; Milton, in his letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, complained "that our
children are forced to stick unreasonably in these grammatick flats and
shallows;" and observes that, "though a linguist should pride himself to
have all the tongues Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not
studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he
were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or
tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only;" and Locke said
that "schools fit us for the university rather than for the world."
Commission after commission, committee after committee, have reiterated
the same complaint. How then do we stand now?

I see it indeed constantly stated that, even if the improvement is not so
rapid as could be desired, still we are making considerable progress. But
is this so? I fear not. I fear that our present system does not really
train the mind, or cultivate the power of observation, or even give the
amount of information which we may reasonably expect from the time devoted
to it.

Sir M. E. Grant-Duff has expressed the opinion that a boy or girl of
fourteen might reasonably be expected to "read aloud clearly and
agreeably, to write a large distinct round hand, and to know the ordinary
rules of arithmetic, especially compound addition--a by no means universal
accomplishment; to speak and write French with ease and correctness, and
have some slight acquaintance with French literature; to translate _ad
aperturam libri_ from an ordinary French or German book; to have a
thoroughly good elementary knowledge of geography, under which are
comprehended some notions of astronomy--enough to excite his curiosity; a
knowledge of the very broadest facts of geology and history--enough to
make him understand, in a clear but perfectly general way, how the larger
features of the world he lives in, physical and political, came to be like
what they are; to have been trained from earliest infancy to use his
powers of observation on plants, or animals, or rocks, or other natural
objects; and to have gathered a general acquaintance with what is most
supremely good in that portion of the more important English classics
which is suitable to his time of life; to have some rudimentary
acquaintance with drawing and music."

To effect this, no doubt, "industry must be our oracle, and reason our
Apollo," as Sir T. Browne says; but surely it is no unreasonable estimate;
yet how far do we fall short of it? General culture is often deprecated
because it is said that smatterings are useless. But there is all the
difference in the world between having a smattering of, or being well
grounded in, a subject. It is the latter which we advocate--to try to
know, as Lord Brougham well said, "everything of something, and something
of everything."

"It can hardly," says Sir John Herschel, "be pressed forcibly enough on
the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural
phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its
circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences."

The present system in most of our public schools and colleges sacrifices
everything else to classics and arithmetic. They are most important
subjects, but ought not to exclude science and modern languages. Moreover,
after all, our sons leave college unable to speak either Latin or Greek,
and too often absolutely without any interest in classical history or
literature. But the boy who has been educated without any training in
science has grave reason to complain of "knowledge to one entrance quite
shut out."

By concentrating the attention, indeed, so much on one or two subjects, we
defeat our own object, and produce a feeling of distaste where we wish to
create an interest.

Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of
book-learning--the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the
memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary
schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable
intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists
of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and
have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our
public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary
monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the
opposite course with children--to give them a wholesome variety of mental
food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their
minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child
should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A
boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have
forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a
thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach
himself more than the first ever knew. Children are by nature eager for
information. They are always putting questions. This ought to be
encouraged. In fact, we may to a great extent trust to their instincts,
and in that case they will do much to educate themselves. Too often,
however, the acquirement of knowledge is placed before them in a form so
irksome and fatiguing that all desire for information is choked, or even
crushed out; so that our schools, in fact, become places for the
discouragement of learning, and thus produce the very opposite effect from
that at which we aim. In short, children should be trained to observe and
to think, for in that way there would be opened out to them a source of
the purest enjoyment for leisure hours, and the wisest judgment in the
work of life.

Another point in which I venture to think that our system of education
might be amended, is that it tends at present to give the impression that
everything is known.

Dr. Busby is said to have kept his hat on in the presence of King Charles,
that the boys might see what a great man he was. I doubt, however, whether
the boys were deceived by the hat; and am very skeptical about Dr. Busby's
theory of education.

Master John of Basingstoke, who was Archdeacon of Leicester in 1252,
learned Greek during a visit to Athens, from Constantina, daughter of the
Archbishop of Athens, and used to say afterwards that though he had
studied well and diligently at the University of Paris, yet he learned
more from an Athenian maiden of twenty. We cannot all study so pleasantly
as this, but the main fault I find with Dr. Busby's system is that it
keeps out of sight the great fact of human ignorance.

Boys are given the impression that the masters know everything. If, on the
contrary, the great lesson impressed on them was that what we know is as
nothing to what we do not know, that the "great ocean of truth lies all
undiscovered before us," surely this would prove a great stimulus, and
many would be nobly anxious to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge,
and extend the intellectual kingdom of man. Philosophy, says Aristotle,
begins in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas.

Education ought not to cease when we leave school; but if well begun
there, will continue through life.

Moreover, whatever our occupation or profession in life may be, it is most
desirable to create for ourselves some other special interest. In the
choice of a subject every one should consult his own instincts and
interests, I will not attempt to suggest whether it is better to pursue
art or science; whether we should study the motes in the sunbeam, or the
heavenly bodies themselves. Whatever may be the subject of our choice, we
shall find enough, and more than enough, to repay the devotion of a
lifetime. Life no doubt is paved with enjoyments, but we must all expect
times of anxiety, of suffering, and of sorrow; and when these come it is
an inestimable comfort to have some deep interest which will, at any rate
to some extent, enable us to escape from ourselves.

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