The Press. — London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

918 his brain only, and the man who exerts his muscles only, is equally violating her laws, and those laws are never vio• lated with impunity. I don't want to overstate my case. I am not denying that the hours of labour are many, nor that the cares of life press heavily on the working man who is also a student ; but 1 affirm that the obstacles which labour places in the way of intellectual advance, though real, are less formidable than they look, while by their nature they save the student from other dangers quite as real, which beset the man whose time is entirely his own —the danger, on the one hand, of an idle and relaxed habit; the danger, on the other, of mental wear and tear, induced by not knowing when to leave off. Even four hours in the week, or rather more than two hundred in tha year, regularly and earnestly devoted to one branch of thought, will carry an intelligent man very far in any study whatever. Speaking in this place, I need hardly notice the old cavil raised against institutions like these, that their pro moters look only to the development of intellect and neg lect the moral faculties. No doubt there are instances where grievous moral imperfections have been shown by able and cultivated men ; and, on the other hand, we all know that very ignorant persona may be exemplary in their conduct, although in cases where remarkable ignorance is found associated with high morality I think it will usually be observed that the ignorance has not been voluntary, but the inevitable result of unfavorable circumstances. But the general rule I take to be this, that a healthy organisa tion, well developed, will gain in every direction by whatever it gains iu one. In the physical part of our nature the healthy body and the healthy brain are more likely at least to go together than either of them with the reverse. And so it is with the mind and the moral sense ; when the eyes of the intel lect are opened, and imagination is summoned to fulfil her legitimate function,—when the awful vastness of the universe appears, and the wonderful mechanism of man is unveiled, and the not less wonderful system of moral checks and counterchecks by which the fatric of society is ren dered self•sustaining, strikes clear and full upon the view, the mere fact of familiarity with ideas so high and so wide reaching produces a frame of mind incompatible with the • taking pleasure in those low and sensual and degrading pursuits which constitute the bulk of immorality as it exists in England. 111 But there is another point of view in which these institu tions may be considered, and one to which I attach great importance. Recollect what modern society is. Recollect what modern labour is. We bring together men in masses ; we employ them in mechanical pursuits. The very perfection of the work done—the cause of that perfection, division of labour, carried to the highest point—tends to render occupation more and more monotonous ; so that the intel lect, craving stimulus, asking for variety, is starved. For, to an active brain, intellectual inaction—the want of sub jects for thought—is quite as painful as to the habitually inert temperament is the unaccustomed toil of though t. What, then, I ask, becomes of the vast masses of intelli gent men and women which we congregate in these towns ? What are our national amusements? None—or next to none. Even the simplest of all pleasures, the enjoyment of natural beauty, is rarely possible. The leisure hours here fall mostly at night, when out•door pleasures are inap propriate, even if the neighbourhood of our towns afforded more ficilities for such pleasures than they do. We want, then, besides teaching for those who will be instructed, rational amusements for those who only desire to be in• terested. lam not ashamed of putting that prominently forward as an object which we ought to keep in view. Health is weakened, disease generated, life shortened, by the depression of spirits which follows upon an unstimu lated existence. Men die for want of cheerfulness, as plants die for want of light. That is a fact to which you may get medical testimony in plenty ; and it is to this very difficulty of finding pleasures—a difficulty arising in part out of the accidents of our social state, in part out of the grave, earnest, energetic, reflective, but rather sombre cast of mind which for many centuries has distinguished the people of this nation—that I ascribe that habit of exces sive social indulgence which is still the principal reproach upon our national morals and manners. I affirm, then, that in every point of view intellectual, moral, even sanitary institutions such as this is intended to be—partly social, partly literary, useful to the few who study in earnest, attractive to the many whose chief aim is amusement — have in both those capacities a real and substantial value. Your lectures, your reading-rooms, your evening classes, your lending library—for that essential element of popular usefulness I hope it is not proposed to omit—will each draw to you subscribers, each probably subscribers of a different class. The establishment of an athenaeum, a lyceum, an institute, call it which you will, in every large town of England is no longer a mere luxury which may be enjoyed or dispensed with at pleasure, but has become an essential and integral part of our social organisation. I know all that has been and that may be said against these institutions, and it is possible that their actual results may disappoint unreasonable expectations on the one hand as they have dispelled unworthy fears on the other. But I deny in loto what is sometimes affirmed—that the experiment of their establishment has been hitherto a failure. Bear in mind that it is only of late years that the prejudices once entertained against them have been over 'come, and that they have ceased to bear a distinctively party character. Bear in mind that only within the last few years has there issued from the press that vastness of cheap and valuable publications which have so much faci litated the formation of provincial libraries. Remember too that while churches, schools, colleges, hospitals are endowed, institutes have been almost universally left to live from hand to mouth with little or no capital in reserve, dependent for their very existence upon every temporary fluctuation of popularity. Recollect, lastly, that if official statistics may be trusted (and the private experience of most of us will, I believe, confirm them), school attendance in England is only one-half of what it should be in order THE PRESS. to give every young person growing up a fair elementary training. Under these disadvantages, with prejudices to combat, with inadequate means, with no permanent funds, and with only one•half the people prepared to receive their teaching, these literary institutions have increased until they now number more than eight hundred, and new ones are being founded daily. In my belief, their sphere of action admits of vast enlargement. T hold that they are destined to perform, as regards the more numerous class of society, the same functions as those which the univer sities discharge towards the wealthier. They combine two advantages of which it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the value—first, that members of every religious denomi nation meet here upon equal terms ; next, that they start unencumbered with traditions, and taking as their point of departure the educational ideas not of any former but of the present age. Here, gentlemen, let me express a hope that you will not rest content with what has been or is being done—not even with the success and progress of this institution— but that you will couple with it, either as part of the same establishment or separately under the act of Parliament, a free, or nearly free, library for the use of the hundred thousand persons who inhabit this town and its neighbour. hood. Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Bolton, even War rington, have set you the example. Out of eighteen places where it has been proposed to put the act in force, it has been carried in thirteen; and having watched the movement during four years I can bear witness that, though difficulties are often made about the setting up of a free library, no in stance has occurred within my knowledge where, one having been established, it has failed to command popular support, or to answer the purpose of its establishment. If, as has been the case in some places, a rate he objected to, the thing may be done by private means. A capital of 2,0001. will give, at the lowest estimate, a collection of 10,000 volumes to begin with, and 1,000 subscribers of only four shillings yearly will supply an income amply sufficient to defray all necessary expenses. But a rate supported library is preferable, first, because in that case alone can it be absolutely free ; secondly, because that mode of support gives to it a more public and popular character. Next comes the question—when you have got your atheneum, what is it there intended to teach ? That is a vast subject, and one which, in deference to your time, I shall touch on in the shortest possible manner. First, I think it is desirable that intellectual competition should be stimulated in every possible manner ; and I heard, therefore, with peculiar pleasure some words which fell from the president of the institution this morning, as to the propriety of establishing examinations and rewarding efficiency with prizes. What is read with some definite and tangible end in view is apt to be more carefully studied and longer remembered than what is read in a vague and general idea of improvement. Next, I hold that a wide latitude should be given to individual taste. What a man wishes to learn he will learn better, more quickly, and with more profit to himself, than what he undertakes to study merely upon the recommendation of others, even though the latter may be more generally useful. Subject to this qualification I will mention those topics which seem most likely to be of service. I see in a prospectus which has been issued mention of French classes and others for the teaching of languages. lam tar from de preciating such studies ; their interest is great, their use is great even for those who stay at home—much more for those who travel ; but where time and opportunity are limited, and where no special inducement exists, I doubt whether the acquiring of languages is the most necessary or profitable branch of knowledge. Words, after all, are only vehicles of thought; the stores of thought accumu lated in our own tongue are already immense ; and if much of life be passed in that which is rather preparation for study than study itself, little time may remain to corn piete the building for which such wide and ample founda tions have been laid. It seems to me—but remember that I give my opinions on these subjects with the utmost defe rence—that the foundation of a complete and rational edu cation lies in the knowledge of natural laws, as deduced from recorded facts ; a knowledge, first, of those lawn by which the inorganic world is governed—as those which regulate astronomical, geological, and chemical phenomena; next, of those lawn which control organised existences—.a branchlwhich includes physiology in all its departments ; lastly, a knowledge of that which, for want of a more re• cognised term, I must call sciology, embracing the investi gation of social probleuis, and enabling us to trace the paths along which human action has moved in all countries and ages. _ _ _ I ctinnot go far into these topics here, or else I think I could show that the order which I have named, from the study of the simplest structure—inorganic matter—np to that of the highest and most complex—the human mind— is no arbitrary progress, but one which nature herself dic tates and directs. I may be asked what man, unless solely and professedly a philosopher, can find leisure for such inquiries ? I reply it is not necessary to be an astronomer, a geologist, a chemist, a physiologist, in order to learn what have been the principal results of human thought in those departments, or what is their interconnection one with another. The slow progress of discovery affords no measure of the time required to appreciate the results of discovery. It takes ages to make the road which when made may be travelled over in a few years. If interrogated as to the use of such investigations, I would point out that the two great questions which an in telligent mind on beginning to reflect naturally puts are these, "What am I ? " and " What is this universe around me ?" To give an answer, however partial and incomplete. to these queries has been the effort of the human intellect during more than 3,0(X) years, and may be for 3,000 more. No man is so dull that they do not interest him ; none ever has been or ever can be so acute that they do not perplex and baffle him. In comparison with such reflections to SATURDAY, talk of what we call the practical applications of scienee is indeed descending low; yet these applications —never the first object, often nut in any degree the object of the philo sopher—have doubled the wealth and power of England, and incalculably lessened the pressure of human suffering from material causes. In concluding on this head, I would observe that in Eng land we need to study man's works less, and nature more; and even where we apply ourselves to investigate the vast course of human action, we are in the habit of ascribing too much importance to an almost mechanical recollection of facts, and too little to the establishment of those generalisations which give past facts almost their sole im- portance for us. I do not wish to speak in the language of accu sation, or of complaint; yet it does seem strange that a man may leave either of the great universities, after a school and college training which together have extended over ten years, an accomplished classic, an able mathematician, yet wholly unacquainted with external nature, ignorant of the principle upon which a common steam•engine is constructed, ignorant et en of the mechanism which he carries abut with him in his own body, and utterly unversed in the first principles of that law of the land under which he lives. I am, I own it, one of those who say, " Give us a little more of this kind of knowledge in the first instance, and let the ornamental parts of teaching come later, if there are time and incline• Lion for it." I look in education to the practical effect which it is likely to produce on life; and, although I know well that theory is one thing, practice another, yet I do believe (to take one instance of many) that if men knew a little mete about the air they breathe and the water they drink there would be a saving of many lives, now destroyed or shortened by deficient sanitary arrangements. So, again, if men understood better the functions of the brain there would be fewer deaths from overwork, from mental excite ment, or even from intemperance. Generally speaking, I believe that for one person who breaks a physical law with a full clear consciousness that he is breaking it— knowing what he is doing and foreseeing the consequences —there are 100 who break those laws in sheer ignorance, and whom a little knowledge would render cautious. So, again, when I said just now that it seemed to me un natural that a man should be held to be fully educated who knew not the first elements of legal science, I did not, and do not, suppose that law sl.ould be studied by a layman as it is by a lawyer. But every man, though tt may never happen to him to have to set foot within a court of justice, has something to do with evidence ; it is surely of use to every one to know, when au improbable tale is told bin in a matter which concerns his interests, what are the chances of that talc being true or false ; and in works which treat of evidence those chances are minutely analysed and the collective results of many men's expe rience is brought to bear on the subject. Again, dealing with another branch of social science, I may venture to say even here that if the first rules of political economy had been a little better understood both by governments. and communities the worst sufferings which have pre vailed in these manufacturing districts (some of them self-inflicted, some of them the faults of others) migiss have been avoided, or to a great extent diminished. To sum up in a word, I mean this—that the end of all human teaching is human action ; that that teaching is most valuable which tends to direct and economise action ; that such teaching must concern itself mainly with two things—the laws which govern inanimate nature and the laws which govern man; and that whatever does not add to our knowledge on one or other of these subjects is, com paratively speaking, of little value And herein, as i think, one great merit of institutions like these consists, that, being tied down by no statutes, no founders' wills, no traditions of immemorial antiquity, they not only supply instruction to the people, but they supply that kind of in struction for which a popular demand exists. They follow the national taste ; they do not in attempting to direct that taste pervert it. Long may this state of things endure ; and in education, as in other matters, may the transition from past to present habits of thought take place, as in England such transitions mostly do, by no demolition of that which exists, by no sudden disruption of ancient ties, but by the greatest and almost imperceptible accommoda tion of all intelligent minds to that which all perceive to. be inevitable in the course of events ! Sir JOHN KAY SHUTTLEWORTH, who was received with loud cheers, next rose to address the meeting, with the view of defining the connection of lyceums with elementary education, and of showing the neces sity cf founding intermediate institutions for the instruction of youth. Alluding to the many indica tions on all sides that the whole organisation for the instruction of the youth of our population was gra dually approaching perfection, from the removal of the defects of the system of elementary instruction, which he attributed to the efforts of the Govern ment, he observed : The great work which the Committee of Council have directed their attention to has been the conciliation of the religious communions, so that they might become the means of raising the standard of the elementary instructs of this country. That work has been to a very great . ex tent accomplished. Now, the greater part of the reli gions communions have placed themselves in connection with the Government. Step by step each one has acceded to the regulations by which the schools have been entitled to partake of the grants of the Government. Forty norms) schools, educating two thousand students and sending out one thousand teachers annually, have been founded; eight thousand pupil-teachers are now aiding in the instruction of schools, and undergoing the apprenticeship which is to issue in their passing two years in the normal school, and afterwards becoming certificated teachers. Besides these arrangements, the Government has annually expended on