Observations upon Liberal Education. George Turnbull
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and three or fourscore? Will there be no emulation, no rivalship, no bustling or collision, but where there is so great a number of competitors, that their emulations and justlings cannot possibly be attended to with sufficient care, in order to make a proper use and improvement of them to the real advantage and good of each different temper and genius?
The rest of this conversation is not preserved to us. But for these reasons, young pupils were sent very early in ancient times to masters of eminent wisdom and virtue, and well acquainted with the world, who, with the help of proper assistants of their own choice, and under their superintendency, took some ten, some twelve, some seventeen, none above twenty, under their inspection. And upon them did parents devolve the whole care of their children’s education, with full confidence and satisfaction. Here they were safer from the infection of servants than they could possibly be at home with their fathers, who being engaged in business, were obliged to leave the care of their children, in a great measure, to low domestics, or at least could not keep them intirely from their company, which soon effaces the best lessons parents can give. For those masters making education their sole employment, and confining themselves to a small number, could easily watch over and direct all the motions of their pupils, and keep them from whatever company and conversation they thought improper for them. But this was done without force or restraint, with due regard to that love of liberty which is natural to the human mind, and the foundation of magnanimity.
Liberty, said one of these masters, I think it was another Parian, whom Socrates is said to have highly esteemed, is man’s noblest birth-right: the child who loves it not must needs have a very mean dastardly spirit, incapable of nourishing generous seeds: the noble virtues cannot be reared up to any perfection in such a cold, lifeless soil. The whole business therefore of liberal education, and it is called liberal for that very reason, is to cherish into proper vigour the love of liberty, and yet guard it against degenerating into the vice which borders upon it, wilfulness or stubbornness. The great secret of education is to render young minds pliable and submissive, not to commands and threats, or violence, but to mild persuasive reason; willing to do what is right, and for that reason eager to be informed in what is such, and yet at the same time impatient of violent restraint: too manly to be driven like beasts, and yet too rational to refuse to hearken to persuasion, or to oppose what is enjoined them, merely because it is fit for them, and as such. Now, in order to form this temper, youth must be accustomed to rational treatment, that is, to do the things that are good for them, because they are so without feeling any compulsion or restraint laid upon them. “I never command, said he, and I always gain my point. For when I would have any of them under my care to do any thing, I am sure that it is proper for them; and I am as sure that I can easily make them perceive it to be so by asking them a few simple questions, in a mild loving manner, about it. It is not implicit respect to me, but regard to reason I aim at establishing in their minds. And he who is taught to know no master but reason, will soon love the teacher who hath thus made him free, in proportion as he loves reason, and tastes the endearing sweets of the true liberty which reason and virtue alone can give.”
Those sage preceptors well knew, that the desire not of liberty only, but of dominion, is natural to mankind, and a passion that ought not to be erased but cherished. This desire is, perhaps, the original of most vicious habits that are ordinary and natural. But without it, how listless and dead would the human mind be? Upon this stock only, can all the great or heroic virtues be grafted. And therefore, kind nature hath not implanted it in our breasts, to be eradicated by a tyrannical father or schoolmaster, but to be nursed and directed into the laudable ambition and true greatness of soul of which it is the seed: into the noble desire of acquiring authority by superior wisdom and virtue; and into the virtuous pride which consists in foregoing pleasure, or suffering pain with chearful constancy, for the satisfaction and merit of doing great and generous deeds.
This natural love of dominion and power discovers itself early, and that chiefly in these two things. We see children, so soon almost as they are born, long, I am sure, before they can speak, grow peevish, and cry for nothing but to have their wills. They would have their desires yielded to by others, those especially they come to consider under certain distinctions, which parents are generally not remiss in teaching them to make. And how very early does their desire of property and possession appear? How soon do they begin to please themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right they thereby have to dispose of things as they will? He who has not observed these two humours working betimes in children, must have taken very little notice of their actions. And he who thinks, that these two roots of almost all the injustice, oppression, and contention, which so sadly disturb human life, are to be intirely rooted out, hath not reflected, that this love of dominion is a necessary spur to industry and improvement, and the chief spring of all our motions. Ancient masters did not therefore dream of weeding it out, but carefully applied themselves to give it a right turn, and to improve it into the noble virtues of which it is the natural principle or stock.
Now you may easily perceive, that beating or corporal punishment of any kind, was seldom used in such academies, or where it was the design of education to render the mind free, active and great, nothing being more diametrically opposite to such an end. Blows, often repeated, may produce a timorous, slavish mind, and miserably deject or debase the soul; or they may beget an inclination, a longing in young people, to have it in their power to tyranize in the same manner over others in their turn. ’Tis reason alone, i.e. accustomance to listen to and obey reason, that can form a truly rational temper, or establish reason as a governor in the mind. There is indeed no danger of misconduct, but where reason does not preside, and is not regularly consulted. And in order to bring this about, young people must from their infancy be inured to consult reason, and to feel the pleasure of governing themselves by it. The rod, which is the only instrument in government that tutors or schoolmasters generally know, or at least use, is a very short compendious way, which may at once flatter their pride, love of power and laziness, but it is the most unfit, nay the most dangerous of any that can be used in education. For extravagant young lads, who have liveliness and spirit, come sometimes to think, and taking once a right turn, seldom fail to make able and great men. But timid, low and dejected minds, are hardly ever to be raised, and so very seldom attain to any thing that is laudable, but generally prove as useless to themselves as to others. The principal rocks upon one or other of which education commonly splits, are, over-indulgence, which of course renders some favourite caressed passion too strong for reason during one’s whole life; or over-severity, which either dispirits, or begets stubbornness and a cruel disposition. And therefore, to avoid the great danger that is on either hand, must be the principal art in education. And what is this! but to keep up a child’s spirit, easy, active and free, and yet at the same time, to inure him to self-command, or to take a pleasure and pride in restraining himself from many things he has a mind to, and in undergoing many things that may be uneasy to him for the superior pleasure of doing good, and gaining at once the approbation of his own reason, and the love and esteem of his parents, masters, and all good and wise men.14 But corporal punishments cannot possibly contribute any thing to this excellent end. This kind of correction conduces not at all to the mastery of our propensity, to indulge present bodily pleasure, and to avoid present corporal pain by any means. It rather encourages and strengthens this inclination, which, in spight of the best care, must grow up with us to a considerable degree of strength. And by cherishing it, the source whence almost all the irregularities in life flow, is fed. For by what other motive, but of sensual pleasure and pain, does a child act, who drudges at his task against his inclination, or abstains from any unwholesome fruit, for instance, he likes, only out of fear of being drubb’d? He in this instance only avoids the greater present corporal pain, or prefers the greater present corporal pleasure. And is there any virtue in being influenced by such views? What can this do but invigorate a passion, which it is the business of education to destroy, or rather to prevent? Will this method beget an inclination to be actuated and guided by reason, and a higher relish for the approbation of a considerative mind, reflecting upon reasonable conduct, than for any joys mere sense can be gratified by? This sort of chastisement naturally creates an antipathy against that which it is the preceptor’s business to cherish a liking to. For how obvious is it, that children soon come to have an aversion to things, whatever pleasure they at first took in them, when they find themselves teazed, chid, or tormented about them? Nay, who is there among grown up men that would not be disgusted with any innocent