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Enmitm.
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Enmitm.
Enmitm .
Untitled Article
Last week we complained that men were taught sciences but not Science , and that their facile credulity no less than their vicious logic were mainly to be attributed to this neglect . We have now before us a thoughtful and noticeable pamphlet issued from Manchester— Shall the Poor only receive Education ?—inwhich the writer , points out the pernicious consequences of such neglect as seen in the great manufacturing districts . While everybody is crying put " Educate the people !"—and crying louder in Manchester than elsewhere—it seems to this writer that the people do not stand in so much need of education as the rich . They who are to lead and to govern need more light than their followers :
"We are in fact suffering severely from ignorance ; every man in hia own business or profession sees it abundantly . How difficult after all ib is to find either a good workman , or a thoroughly taught and scientific man . In many trades a workman may be taught by the greatest stranger to his business , if he has only a little common sense , and some systematically arranged knowledge ; whole years of experience among ordinary workmen seem to have produced no more knowledge than a few well taught days would have done . But the same of masters ; how difficult it is to find a good manager who is properly the master as he ought to be in knowledge ; how valuable he is when found , and how likely to turn out the true master in all respects . The sons of the employer and the employed are taught only
the rudiments of education , the mere foundation , leaving the building quite out ; they enter trades or manufactures without a principle , and only those who have unusual thinking power manage during a life to form principles for themselves These attempts are often sufficiently crude , and would be excessively amusing , were it not painful to think that this principle which they do discover is often perfectly absurd , and has been formed after a great effort , and that a right one might as easily have been put into its place with only a slight effort . We know how hare it is to evolve principles out of a collection of facts . It lias been the work of the great men of all times , but we leave it to every man to do it as he best may . It is only in professions , and not all these , where principles are taught , and the tradesmen are left to depend on their own vigour of mind . Some of our trades
depend on the result of the most minute investigations of nature ; their success depends on the principles being strictly adhered to ; their progress depends on the principles being so well known that a new step becomes possible . But what do we find to be the case ? For no trade or manufacture is there a place where a man may learn the principles on which he must work . There are engineers and machinists among us , but how is it possible that many of them can know their work except as an art . The bad shoemaker must always be making apologies for the leather . "We spend millions on . railways , millions on legal fees to get railways , millions on engineers , but not a penny to teach these engineers , whether the civil engineer or the driver of the engine . Ife is simply because the very leaders are ignorant ; something moro than the standard of the general body of the people
must be a standard for them . " We really have done so well without education that we almost imagine ourselves superior to the wants of a mere school . I grant the wonderful energy of mind which has produced all the great results around us , but it is because there is so much to admire , that we shou ld be anxious for improvement ; the more rapidly the horses run the more steady-handed and sharp-eyed must be the driver . Wo must remember , too , how hard it is for any man to originate a thought , how few have it in their power to learn by experience or by observation the secrets of nature We see whole generations spent in eliciting truths which the most moderate intellect can absorb in an instant , and see to be essentially true . We may infer therefore that a man may know all t he principles of his trade or profession , if well taueht ; but his whole life , even if he be a talented man , may bo spent in eliciting one principle , if ho be left to himself ; and if he bo not talented , even this one principle will escape detection . "
He concludes , therefore , that we should have schools for principles ; schools wherein , besides the acquisition of a special art or science , the pupils may educate their minds by generalities , and when learning a speciality , may learn it thoroughly . We have no space to folloy this writer ' s exposition of the plan he proposes , but we direct attention to Ins mmphlet as the best which 1 ms come under our notice for a long while . Education is the subject of an able and amusingly-written article in the Westminster Review , wherein ridicule and logic arc brought to bear against the " sectarian Cerberus—that monster with many heads , and all of them rabid" The writer traces the history of the attempts to secure secular education in England , and the history is damning to all the sects . Another the sal Review presents a o
^^ ^ ^^^ n nT g a „ t t e ^ mew ^ increasing tendency to Over- le ^ , or the bcl ^ in the efficacy of life according to Acts of Parliament Though we ,, o longer presume to coerce men for their spiritual < jood , we still hmk ourselves called upon to coerce them for their material yood All our Zlv cxper ^ ncc i against the efficiency of Government and Acts of Parhadaily cxpuiuic / " intervention of the State , ment , and yet all our 1 opts uusi i ,. fc t t , f H 2 r * KSEKR ? 2 Siir > Jtt uniformly unsuccessful in ™'" P » ' « ' , „„ , 1 ) V thc state
panacea' On the evil of these topical « u « . u , w ™> L . ^~ ~ , p hysician , read thls : 7 " . . , of politicians that tlioy novor look beyond « It is tho vico of tins 01 ^ ' ^ ™ J cominoa with fchu nneducuted marc * proximate causes and , « . in « l « J . to o «« A ^ ^ nntocfldoIlt anll onc W hubilually rogurdcuch P ^ J ^ ^ puonomomm in a link in «« inconsequent . They do not bu « ™ . m » p llononiolll ,, and mil have a finite Horio ^ w . tlwnwdioi » W ^^ 1 ^ . ^ ovcr ) Oolc tlu » fact , S inXS ^ ila ££ of » U- tUoy - not only , nod , fy , ng tho
result next in succession , but all the future results into which this will enter as a part cause . The serial genesis of phenomena , and the interaction of each series upon every other series , produces a complexity utterly beyond human grasp . Even in the simplest cases this is so . A servant who mends ; the fire sees but jfew effects from the burning of a lump of coal . The man , of science , however , know ^ that there are very many effects . He knows that the combustion" establishes numerous atmospheric currents , and through them moves thousands of cubic feet of air inside the house and out . He knows that the heat diffused causes expansions and subsequent contractions of all bodies within its range . He knows that the persons warmed are affected in their rate of respiration and their waste of tissue , and that these physiological changes must have various secondary results . He knows that , could he trace to their ramified influences all the forces disengaged ,
mechanical , chemical , thermal ,, . electric—could he enumerate all the subsequent effects of the evaporation caused , the gases generated , the light evolved , the heat radiated—a volume would scarcely suffice to enter them . If now from a simple inorganic change such complex results arise , how infinitely multiplied , how utterly incalculable must be the ultimate consequences of any force brought to bear upon society . Wonderfully constructed as it is— -mutually dependent as are its members for the satisfaction of their wants—affected as each unit of it is by his fellows , not only as to his safety and prosperity , but in his health , his temper , his culture - —the social organism cannot be dealt with in any one part without all other parts being influenced in ways that cannot be foreseen . You put a duty on paper , and by-and-by find that through the medium of the jacquard-cards employed you
have inadvertently taxed figured silk , sometimes to the extent of several shillings per piece . On removing the impost from bricks you discover that its existence had increased the dangers of mining , by preventing shafts from being lined and workings from being tunneled . By the excise on soap you have , it turns out , greatly encouraged the use of caustic washing-powders , and so have unintentionally entailed an immense destruction of clothes . In every case you perceive , on careful inquiry , that besides acting upon that which you sought to act upon , you have acted upon many other things , and each , of these again on many others , and so have propagated a multitude of changes more or less appreciable in all directions . We need feel no surprise , then , that in their efforts to cure specific evils , legislators have continually caused collateral evils they never thought of . No Carlyle ' s wisest man , nor any body of such , could avoid causing them . Though their production
is explicable enough after it has occurred , it is never anticipated . " The writer reduces the question to one of first principles : ¦ — - " Manifestly as desire of some kind is the invariable stimulus to action in the individual , every social agency of what nature soever must have some aggregate of desires for its motive power . Men in their collective capacity can exhibit no result but what has its origin in some appetite , feeling , or taste common amongst them . Didnot they like meat , there could be no cattle-graziers , no Smithfield , no distributing organization of butchers . Operas , Philharmonic Societies , musicpublishers , and street organ-boys , have all been called into being by our love of melodious sounds . Look through the trades ' -directory ; take up a guide to the London sights ; read the index of Bradshaw ' s time-tables , the reports of the learned societies , or the advertisements of new books , and you see in the publication itself , and in tho things it describes , so many products of human activity ,
stimulated by human desire . Under this stimulus gi'ow np agencies alike the most gigantic and the most insignificant , the most complicated and the most simpleagencies for national defence and for the sweeping of crossings ; for the daily distribution of letters , and for thc collection of bits of coal out of the Thames mudagencies that subserve all ends , from the preaching of Christianity to the protection of animals from ill-treatment ; from the production of bread for a nation to the supply of groundsel for caged singing-birds . The accumulated desires of individuals being then the moving power by which every social agency is worked , the question to be considered is—Which is tho most economical kind of agency ? The agency having no power in itself , but being- merely an instrument , our inquiry must be for the most efficient instrument—the instrument that costs least , and wastes the smallest amount of the moving power—tho instrument least liable to get out of order , and most readily put right again when it does so . Of the two kinds of social mechanism exemplified above , thc spontaneous and tho governmental , which is the best ?"
Having put the question thus , lie proceeds to arraign officialism on the various counts of being slow , stupid , corrupt , extravagant , and obstructive . The facts are adduced with terrible force . On the side of spontaneouslyformed agencies not Governmental , the writer is also eloquent in facts : —• " Consider first how immediately every private enterprise is dependent upon the need for it ; and how impossible it is for it to continuo if there be no need . Daily are new trades and new companies established . If they subserve noino existing public want , they take root and grow . If they do not , they die of inanition . It needs no agitation , no act of parliament , to put them down . Ah with all natural organizations , if there is no function for them , no nutriment comes to them , and they dwindle away , Moreover , not only do tho new agencies disappear if they are
superfluous , but the old ones cense to bo when they lmvo done their work . Unlike law-made instrumentalities—unlike Heralds' Offices , which are maintained for ages after heraldry has lost all value— -unlike Ecclesiastical Courts , which continuo to flourish for generations after they have become an abomination—thoao privufo organizations are abolished when they become needless . A widely minified coaching system ceases to exist as soon na u more efficient railway system eonie .-t into being . And not simply does it ceaso to exist , and to abstract funds , but tho materials of which it was made are absorbed mul turned to use . Couch mini , guards , and tho rest , are employed to profit elsewhere—do not continuo for twenty years a burden like the compensated officials of somo abolished department of the Stnto . " '
Following this ultra-democratic paper- ^ - fo r is not its tendency that of self-government ? and is not that tho English for democracy ?—there is a lively and curious paper on Pedigree and Heraldry , wherein the sentiment of birth is glowingly set forth as a true and ennobling sentiment . We direct attention also to thc opening article on John Knox , a narrative , in which the great reformor is panegyrized in a strain we cannot respond to , anil his evil influence never once recognised . Of the other papers we may mention one on Jialzac , as being fur from the requirements of such a subject , both in knowledge and critical grasp . Had Balzac been unknown
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Critics are not tkeaegislatoi-s , but the judges and polipe of literature . They do not makelaws > -tn . ey interpret and try to enfoicettiem . —Edinburgh Beview .
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3 vl * 9 , 18531 THE LEADEB . 667 — " ' ' ' . . ' . . ' ~ '""" - " "' ' .... ¦¦ ¦ . . .-i —_ , _ , , —_ .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 9, 1853, page 667, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1994/page/19/
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