Friends in Council Part 11

Observe the effect of this disproportionate care for little things in the disputes of men. A man who does so care, has a garment embroidered with hooks which catch at everything that pa.s.ses by. He finds many more causes of offence than other men; and each offence is a more bitter thing to him than to others. He does not expect to be offended. Poor man! He goes through life wondering that he is the subject of general attack, and that the world is so quarrelsome.

The result of a bad education in developing undue care for trifles may be seen in its effect on domestic government and government in general. If those in power have this fault, they will make the persons under them miserable by petty, constant blame; or they will make them indifferent to all blame. If this fault is in the governed, they will captiously object to all the ways and plans of their superiors, not knowing the difficulty of doing anything; they will expect miracles of attention, justice, and temper, which the rough-hewed ways of men do not admit of; and they will repine and tease the life out of those in authority. Sometimes both superiors and inferiors, governors and governed, have this fault. This must often happen in a family, and is a fearful punishment to the elders of it. Scarcely any goodness of disposition, and what are called great qualities, can make such difficult materials work well together.

But I end with somewhat of the same argument as I began with, namely, that as a man lives more with himself than with art, science, or even with his fellows, a wise teacher, having before him the intent to make a happy-minded man of his pupil, will try to lay a groundwork of divine contentment in him. If he cannot make him easily pleased, he will at least try and prevent him from being easily disconcerted. Why, even the self-conceit that makes people indifferent to small things, wrapping them in an atmosphere of self- satisfaction, is welcome in a man compared to that querulousness which makes him an enemy to all around. But most commendable is that easiness of mind which is easy because it is tolerant, because it does not look to have everything its own way, because it expects anything but smooth usage in its course here, because it has resolved to manufacture as few miseries out of small evils as can be.

Most of us know what it is to vex our minds because we cannot recall some name or trivial thing which has escaped our memory for the moment. But then we think how foolish this is, what little concern it is to us. We are right in that; yet any defect of memory is a great concern compared to many of the trifling niceties, comforts, offences, and rectangularities which, perhaps, we do not think it an ign.o.ble use of heart and time to waste ourselves upon. It would be well enough to entertain the rabble of small troubles and offences, if we could lay them aside with the delightful facility of children, who, after an agony of tears, are soon found laughing or asleep.

But the chagrin and vexation of grown-up people are grown-up too; and, however childish in their origin, are not to be laughed or danced or slept away in childlike simple-heartedness.

We must not imagine that too much stress can well be laid upon the importance of an education to contentment, for it comes under the head of those things which are not adjuncts or acquisitions for a man, but which form the texture of his being. What a man has learnt is of importance; but what he is, what he can do, what he will become, are more significant things. Finally, it may be remarked, that, to make education a great work, we must have the educators great; that book-learning is mainly good as it gives us a chance of coming into the company of greater and better minds than the average of men around us; and that individual greatness and goodness are the things to be aimed at rather than the successful cultivation of those talents which go to form some eminent membership of society.

Each man is a drama in himself--has to play all the parts in it; is to be king and rebel, successful and vanquished, free and slave; and needs a bringing-up fit for the universal creature that he is.

Ellesmere. You have been unexpectedly merciful to us. The moment I heard the head of the essay given out, there flitted before my frightened mind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell, Wilderspin, normal farms, National Society, British Schools, interminable questions about how religion might be separated altogether from secular education, or so much religion taught as all religious sects could agree in. These are all very good things and people to discuss, I daresay; but, to tell the truth, the whole subject sits heavy on my soul. I meet a man of inexhaustible dulness, and he talks to me for three hours about some great subject--this very one of education, for instance--till I sit entranced by stupidity, thinking the while, "And this is what we are to become by education--to be like you." Then I see a man like D--- , a judicious, reasonable, conversable being, knowing how to be silent too--a man to go through a campaign with--and I find he cannot read or write.

Milverton. This sort of contrast is just the thing to strike you, Ellesmere: and yet you know as well as any of us that to bring forward such contrasts by way of depreciating education would be most unreasonable. There are three things that go to make a man-- the education that most people mean by education; then the education that goes deeper, the education of the soul; and, thirdly, a man's gifts of Nature. I agree with all you say about D---; he never says a foolish thing, and does a great many judicious ones. But look what a clever face he has. There are gifts of Nature for you.

Then, again, although he cannot read or write, he may have been most judiciously brought up in other respects. He may have had two, therefore, out of the three elements of education. What such instances would show, I believe, if narrowly looked into, is the immense importance of the education of heart and temper.

I feel with you in some measure about the dulness of the subject of education. But then it extends to all things of the inst.i.tution kind. Men must have a great deal of pedantry, routine, and folly of all sorts, in any large matter they undertake. I had had this feeling for a long time (you know the way in which you have a thing in your mind, although you have never said it out exactly even to yourself)--well, I came upon a pa.s.sage of Emerson's which I will try to quote, and then I knew what it was that I had felt.

"We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper societies, are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please n.o.body. There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way?" . . . "And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole of Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will."

Now, without agreeing with him in all points, we may sympathise with him.

Ellesmere. I agree with him.

Dunsford. I knew you would. You love an extreme.

Milverton. But look now. It is well to say, "It is natural and beautiful that the young should ask and the old should teach"; but then the old should be capable of teaching, which is not the case we have to deal with. Inst.i.tutions are often only to meet individual failings. Let there be more instructed elders, and the "dead weight" of Sunday-schools would be less needed.

I think the result of our thoughts would be, that there should be as much life, joy, and Nature put into teaching as can be; but I, for one, am not prepared to say that the most mechanical process is not better than none.

Ellesmere. Well, you have now shut up the subject, according to your fashion, in a rounded sentence; and you think after that there is nothing more to be said. But I say it goes to my heart--

Dunsford. What is that?

Ellesmere. To my heart to see the unmerciful quant.i.ty of instruction that little children go through on a Sunday. I suppose I am a very wicked man; but I know how wearied I should have been, at any time of my life, if so much virtuous precept and good doctrine had been poured into me.

Milverton. Well, I will not fight certainly for anything that is to make Sunday a wearisome day for children. Indeed, what I meant by putting more joy and life into teaching was, that in such a thing as this Sunday-schooling, for instance, a judicious man, far from being anxious to get a certain quant.i.ty of routine done about it, would do with the least--would endeavour to connect it with something interesting--would, in a word, love children, and not Sunday- schools.

Ellesmere. Ah, we will have no more about Sunday-schools. I know we all agree in reality, although Dunsford has been looking very grave and has not said a word. I wanted to tell you that I think you are quite right, Milverton, in saying a good deal about multifariousness of pursuit. You see a wretch of a pedant who knows all about tetrameters or statutes of uses, but who, as you hinted an essay or two ago, can hardly answer his child a question as they walk about the garden together. The man has never given a good thought or look to Nature. Well then, again, what a stupid thing it is that we are not all taught music. Why learn the language of many portions of mankind, and leave the universal language of the feelings, as you would call it, unlearnt?

Milverton. I quite agree with you; but I thought you always set your face, or rather your ears, against music.

Dunsford. So did I.

Ellesmere. I should like to know all about it. It is not to my mind that a cultivated man should be quite thrown out by any topic of conversation, or that there should be any form of human endeavour or accomplishment which he has no conception of.

Dunsford. I liked what you said, Milverton, about the philosophy of making light of many things, and the way of looking at life that may thus be given to those we educate. I rather doubted at first, though, whether you were not going to a.s.sign too much power to education in the modification of temper. But, certainly, the mode of looking at the daily events of life, little or great, and the consequent habits of captiousness or magnanimity, are just the matters which the young especially imitate their elders in.

Milverton. You see, the very worst kind of tempers are established upon the fretting care for trifles that I want to make war upon in the essay. A man is choleric. Well, it is a very bad thing; it tends to frighten those about him into falseness. He has outrageous bursts of temper. He is humble for days afterwards. His dependants rather like him after all. They know that "his bark is worse than his bite." Then there is your gloomy man, often a man who punishes himself most--perhaps a large-hearted, humorous, but sad man, at the same time liveable with. He does not care for trifles. But it is your acid-sensitive (I must join words like Mirabeau's Grandison- Cromwell, to get what I mean), and your cold, querulous people that need to have angels to live with them. Now education has often had a great deal to do with the making of these choice tempers. They are somewhat artificial productions. And they are the worst.

Dunsford. You know a saying attributed to the Bishop of --- about temper. No? Somebody, I suppose, was excusing something on the score of temper, to which the Bishop replied, "Temper is nine-tenths of Christianity."

Milverton. There is an appearance we see in Nature, not far from here, by the way, that has often put me in mind of the effect of temper upon men. It is in the lowlands near the sea, where, when the tide is not up (the man out of temper), there is a slimy, patchy, diseased-looking surface of mud and sick seaweed. You pa.s.s by in a few hours, there is a beautiful lake, water up to the green gra.s.s (the man in temper again), and the whole landscape brilliant with reflected light.

Ellesmere. And to complete the likeness, the good temper and the full tide last about the same time--with some men at least. It is so like you, Milverton, to have that simile in your mind. There is nothing you see in Nature, but you must instantly find a parallel for it in man. Sermons in stones you will not see, else I am sure you might. Here is a good hard flint for you to see your next essay in.

Milverton. It will do very well, as my next will be on the subject of population.

Ellesmere. What day are we to have it? I think I have a particular engagement for that day.

Milverton. I must come upon you unawares.

Ellesmere. After the essay you certainly might. Let us decamp now and do something great in the way of education--teach Rollo, though he is but a short-haired dog, to go into the water. That will be a feat.

CHAPTER IX.

Ellesmere succeeded in persuading Rollo to go into the water, which proved more, he said, than the whole of Milverton's essay, how much might be done by judicious education. Before leaving my friends, I promised to come over again to Worth-Ashton in a day or two, to hear another essay. I came early and found them reading their letters.

"You remember Annesleigh at college," said Milverton, "do you not, Dunsford?"

Dunsford. Yes.

Milverton. Here is a long letter from him. He is evidently vexed at the newspaper articles about his conduct in a matter of ----, and he writes to tell me that he is totally misrepresented.

Dunsford. Why does he not explain this publicly?

Milverton. Yes, you naturally think so at first, but such a mode of proceeding would never do for a man in office, and rarely, perhaps, for any man. At least, so the most judicious people seem to think.

I have known a man in office bear patiently, without attempting any answer, a serious charge which a few lines would have entirely answered, indeed, turned the other way. But then he thought, I imagine, that if you once begin answering, there is no end to it, and also, which is more important, that the public journals were not a tribunal which he was called to appear before. He had his official superiors.

Dunsford. It should be widely known and acknowledged then, that silence does not give consent in these cases.

Milverton. It is known, though not, perhaps, sufficiently.

Dunsford. What a fearful power this anonymous journalism is!

Milverton. There is a great deal certainly that is mischievous in it; but take it altogether, it is a wonderful product of civilisation--morally too. Even as regards those qualities which would in general, to use a phrase of Bacon's, "be noted as deficients" in the press, in courtesy and forbearance, for example, it makes a much better figure than might have been expected; as any one would testify, I suspect, who had observed, or himself experienced, the temptations incident to writing on short notice, without much opportunity of after-thought or correction, upon subjects about which he had already expressed an opinion.

Dunsford. Is the anonymousness absolutely necessary?

Milverton. I have often thought whether it is. If the anonymousness were taken away, the press would lose much of its power; but then, why should it not lose a portion of its power, if that portion is only built upon some delusion?