[373. Analytical Summary.—1. This study exhibits the influence of philosophical systems on education. New conceptions of human destiny, new theories with respect to the composition of human nature, or a new hypothesis concerning man’s place in nature, determine corresponding changes in educational theory.
2. Perhaps the broadest generalization yet reached in educational theory is the assumption made by Condillac, that the education of each individual should be a repetition of civilization in petto. With Mr. Spencer this hypothesis becomes a law.
3. In theory, the secularization of education has begun. The Church is to lose one of its historical prerogatives, and the modern State is to become an educator.
4. Helvetius typifies what may be called the plastic theory in education, or the conception that the teacher, if wise enough, may ignore all differences in natural endowment. This makes man the victim of his environment. The truth evidently is that man is the only creature which can bend circumstances to his will; and he has such an endowment of power in this direction that he can virtually recreate his environment and thus rise superior to it. And farther than this, there are innate differences in endowment that will persist in spite of all that education can do.
5. The culture value of literary studies is justly exhibited in the quotation from Marmontel, and in particular the disciplinary value of translation.
6. Education for training, discipline, or culture, as distinguished from an education whose chief aim is to impart knowledge, receives definite recognition from Kant.]
[177] Discours préliminaire sur la grammaire, in the Œuvres complètes of Condillac, Tome VI. p. 264.
[178] This is also the main principle in Mr. Spencer’s educational philosophy. “The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind as considered historically; or, in other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race.”—Education, p. 122. (P.)
[179] The general law of human progress is inheritance supplemented by individual acquisition. Using the symbols i (inheritance) and a (acquisition), the progress of the race from its origin upwards, through successive generations, may be exhibited by this series: i; i + a; i (2a) + a; i (3a) + a; i (4a) + a. If the factor of inheritance could be eliminated, as Condillac and Spencer recommend, the series would take this form: a′; a″; a‴; aiv; av: the successive increments in acquisition being due to successive increments in power gained through heredity. But, happily, the law of inheritance cannot be abrogated, and so philosophers write books in order to save succeeding generations from the fate of Sisyphus. (P.)
[180] Cours d’études, Tome X. Introduction.
[181] See Œuvres complètes of Diderot. Edited by Tourneux, 1876-77. Tomes II. and III.
[182] Œuvres, Tome III. p. 459.
[183] For Comte’s classification of the sciences, see Spencer’s Illustrations of Universal Progress, Chap. III. (P.)
[184] See note, p. 131.
[185] This thought will bear extension as in the following quotation: “The reasoning that I oppose starts from the low and false assumption that instruction serves only for the practical use that is made of it; for example, that he who, by his social position, does not make use of his intellectual culture, has no need of that culture. Literature, from this point of view, is useful only to the man of letters, science only to the scientist, good manners and fine bearing only to men of the world. The poor man should be ignorant, for education and knowledge are useless to him. Blasphemy, Gentlemen! The culture of the mind and the culture of the soul are duties for every man. They are not simple ornaments; they are things as sacred as religion” (Renan, Famille et État, p. 3). This is a sufficient answer to Mr. Spencer’s assumption (Education, p. 84), that the studies that are best for guidance are at the same time the best for discipline. See also Dugald Stewart (Elements, p. 12). (P.)
[186] This thought throws light on a dictum of current pedagogy, “First, the idea, then the term.” It shows that very often, in actual experience, the sequence is from term to idea. The relation between term and idea is the same in kind as that between sentence and thought. Must we then say, “First the thought, then the sentence”? Or, “First the thought, then the chapter or the book”?
The disciplinary value of translation is also well stated. It may be doubted whether the schools furnish a better “intellectual gymnastic.” Three high intellectual attainments are involved in a real translation: 1. The separation of the thought from the original form of words; 2. The seizing or comprehension of the thought as a mental possession; and 3. The embodying of the thought in a new form. A strictly analogous process, of almost equal value in its place, is that variety of reading in which the pupil is required to express the thought of the paragraph in his own language. This exercise involves the three processes above stated, and may be called “the translation of thought from one form into another, in the same language.” (P.)
[187] Marmontel, Mémoires d’un père pour servir à l’instruction de ses enfants, Tome I. p. 19.
[188] Maître d’étude: “He who in a lycée, college, or boarding-school, has oversight of pupils during study hours and recreations.”—Littré.
[189] It is a matter of surprise that in a German Pedagogical Library the very first French work published is the Traité de l’Homme of Helvetius. This is giving the place of honor to what is perhaps of the most ordinary value in French pedagogical literature.
[190] See the French translation of this tract at the end of the volume, published by Monsieur Barni, under the title, Éléments métaphysiques de la doctrine de la vertu. Paris, 1855. The work of Kant appeared in German in 1803.
[191] Extract from Kant’s Fragments posthumes.
[192] Monsieur Compayré seems to give his sanction to the “Discipline of Consequences.” I think that Mr. Fitch has correctly stated its limitations (Lectures, p. 117). Kant doubtless borrowed the idea from Rousseau, who employs it in the government of his imaginary pupil. (See Miss Worthington’s translation of the Émile, p. 66.) This doctrine is the basis of Mr. Spencer’s chapter on Moral Education. (P.)
[193] Helvetius, but poorly qualified for teaching moral questions, had had the idea of a Catéchisme de probité. Saint Lambert published, in 1798, a Catéchisme universel.