Mental Impulses are often Vicious; but the Exertion of Physical Power in the Arts is always Beneficent — hence Manual Training tends to correct vicious mental Impulses. — Every mental Impression produces a moral Effect. — All Training is Moral as well as Mental. — Selfishness is total Depravity; but Selfishness has been Deified under the name of Prudence. — Napoleon an Example of Selfishness. — The End of Selfishness is Disaster; but Prevailing Systems of Education promote Selfishness. — The Modern City an Illustration of Selfishness. — The Ancient City. — Existing Systems of Education Negatively Wrong. — Manual Training supplies the lacking Element. — The Objective must take the Place of the Subjective in Education. — Words without Acts are as dead as Faith without Works.

Education, or training, has two immediate and continuous effects—the development of innate mental qualities or aptitudes and the formation of character. In an orderly logical system of training the development would be harmonious, and the resulting formation of character symmetrical. These are, however, ideal conditions requiring a perfect system of training, and students free from the perversions and deformities growing out of the law of heredity. But under any system of training there is progress—development and character formation. The aphorism, “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop,” expresses only a half-truth. What it means is this: if the mind is not well employed it will be ill employed; or if it is not occupied with good thoughts it will be occupied with evil thoughts. The mind of man is never at rest, in equilibrium, even in a state of barbarism. Indeed this is obvious, since all civilizations are growths from states of savagery. But the barbaric line once passed, development is greatly accelerated, assuming with the evolution of the ages the form of a geometrical progression. The distinguishing characteristic of modern civilization is action. In so far as this action, which may be called the impulsive force of the spirit of the age, is natural and orderly, it constitutes an aid to the processes of education; if otherwise, it is obstructive, hindering them.

The law of mental development is not the exact correlative of the law of physical development. The direct aim of physical training is muscular power; of mental training the aim is mental power and rectitude. Physical power is not intrinsically vicious; it becomes vicious only when exerted under a vicious intellectual impulse. But this is not necessarily true of mental power; for mental power may be gained quite apart from the element of rectitude, in which event it is vicious, and may be exerted in scorn of the accepted standards of right, truth, and justice. As a matter of fact it is often so exerted, and the fact that it is so exerted accounts for the crimes of individuals, the faults of society, and the errors of governments. The constitution of mental power is, then, complex, while that of physical power is simple. If mental power consists of sense perception, or understanding, and moral perception, or rectitude, in due proportion, the issue is a noble character; but if rectitude is wanting, the issue is an evil character. If, on the other hand, there is no interference with the orderly development of physical power, the issue of its exertion is always skill—skill applied in innumerable forms to the uses of man. Only through a mental impulse rendered vicious by the absence of the element of rectitude can physical power be diverted from its naturally beneficent mission.

It follows that most of the evils of civilization flow from an ill-balanced mental constitution—a mental constitution wanting the essential element of rectitude. Since, then, mental development, under certain widely prevailing conditions, is so prolific of evil, and physical development or skill so universally prolific of good, it is obvious that the beneficent influence of the latter should, if practicable, be brought to bear upon the former in educational systems. In a word, may not the two systems of training be so connected in the schools as to cause the manual to react upon the mental, with the effect of greatly stimulating the ethical side of the mind?

It is not essential to our purpose to inquire whether a perfect system of education, and hence an ideal state of society, is possible. It will be sufficient if we are able to show wherein prevailing systems of education can be improved.

In a former chapter we sought to show that the use of mechanical tools stimulates the intellect; in the present chapter it is our purpose to endeavor to show that manual training tends to the promotion of rectitude, to the up building of character.

For purposes of culture the mind consists of divisions, as the body consists of members. It is susceptible of development in the line of the application of mental training, as any member of the body is susceptible of development through physical training or use. For example, the memory may be invigorated by the constant application of certain kinds of mental training, as the arm is strengthened by the constant use of the sledge-hammer. But if the mental training which stimulates the memory is applied to the neglect of other lines of training, the memory will be strengthened at the expense of some other faculty of the mind, as the excessive use of the sledge-hammer strengthens the arm at the cost of other members of the body. In the one case the mind, and in the other the body will be deformed. In the case of the sledge-hammer training the muscles of the arm will stand out like whip-cords, while those of the legs will shrivel and become attenuated. In the case of the training of the memory that faculty will show an abnormal development, while some other faculty, as the power of ratiocination, probably, will become weak.

It is not necessary in this connection to inquire into the origin of moral sentiments, or to consider the rival theories on the subject. However men may differ as between the two schools of moral philosophers—the sentimentalists and the utilitarians—they will agree that the moral side of the mind, so to speak, consists of divisions like the mental side; that these divisions are the source, respectively, of good and evil tendencies, and that these tendencies are susceptible of cultivation; that the evil may be restrained and the good developed, and vice versa. Nor will it be disputed that there is such a blending of the moral with the mental nature in the mind of man as to render any consideration of the subject irrational and incomplete which does not comprehend both, and treat them, practically, as one and the same. Man is so constituted, and his relations to society are such, that every mental impression he receives produces a moral effect, the character of which is, of course, largely dependent upon the accepted standards of right, truth, and justice. Hence all scholastic training is both mental and moral. It is moral as well as mental, whether the instructor will it so or not; and that it is moral is well, since it is obviously true, as Galton pertinently remarks, that “Great men have usually high moral natures, and are affectionate and reverential, inasmuch as mere brain without heart is insufficient to achieve eminence.”

Selfishness is the arch enemy of virtue; from it all forms of immorality spring, and its last analysis is total depravity. But literature, which is the fruitage of education, is full of maxims in honor of selfishness. Said the Dauphin to the French king, “Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.” Said Herbert, “Help thyself and God will help thee.” “A penny saved is as good as a penny earned,” said Franklin; and the grasping “Yankee” stretches the maxim a point in saying to his son, “Make money honestly if you can, but make money.”

The following, also, are current maxims: “Every man is the architect of his own fortune;” “Every tub must stand upon its own bottom;” “In the race of life the devil takes the hindmost;” “Look to the main chance;” and, “Keep what you have got, and catch what you can.” To the same purpose is the famous old aphorism of which Napoleon the First was so fond, “God always favors the heaviest battalions.” Emerson declared that Napoleon represented “the spirit of modern commerce, of money, and material power,” and he certainly was the very incarnation of selfishness.[10] He had a hand of iron, and he laid it heavily on all who opposed him. If it became necessary to imprison his enemies he imprisoned them; if it became necessary to kill them he cut off their heads. When charged with the commission of great crimes, he retorted, “Men of my stamp do not commit crimes!” “I have always marched with the opinion of great masses and events,” he exclaimed, with the insolence of a butcher exhibiting his bloody hands. Old-fashioned codes of morals were for those who opposed his plans, not for him. But the end of selfishness is disaster. It is as dangerous to assume to rise above moral laws as to sink below them; in the one case they crush, and in the other they undermine. “The half” is, after all, “more than the whole,” for “the half” may be retained, but “the whole” is sure to slip from the fingers of grasping avarice. Napoleon, who defied all mankind, expiated his crimes on a rock in mid-ocean. There, whining, protesting, and prating of injustice, he died miserably, a colossal example of the folly of selfishness.

Selfishness seeks to wring from society a support without giving to it an equivalent return. What industry creates and saves to society, selfishness seeks to misappropriate to its own use; hence selfishness is in conflict with the true spirit of civilization, which is the compact of all to protect each in his rights. Selfishness caused the destruction of all the governments of ancient times, and it has been the cause of all the revolutions of modern times. There can be no stability in government until altruism takes the place of selfishness in the world’s code of ethics. The sole condition of the stability of the State is a disposition on the part of its people to conform to justice and correct moral principles in all social relations.

Any system of education that does not tend to produce a state of morals conformable to this high standard is not merely defective; it is radically wrong, and therefore positively vicious. The true purpose of education is the harmonious development of all the powers of the man—mental, moral, and physical. But harmony in a selfish character is impossible, for selfishness is blind of one eye, so to speak; it considers only one side of a cause—the side that relates to its interest, regardless of all other interests. Let not prudence be confounded with selfishness. Prudence and selfishness are as wide apart as the poles. Extreme prudence is perfectly consistent with entire rectitude, while extreme selfishness is the synonym of depravity; hence the first step in education is to eliminate selfishness from the mind, and the next step is to put rectitude in its place.

Prevailing systems of education no doubt promote the spirit of selfishness:[11] witness the character of the struggle for self-aggrandizement. It is more intense and more widely extended than at any period of the world’s history. That it is more intense is shown by the more and more rapid concentration of populations in cities, where the struggle assumes its most intense form, and exhibits itself in its most threatening aspect.

Cities have always been plague-spots on the body politic, and they are not less so now than in ancient times. It is in cities that all dangers to the State originate; and the sole, fundamental reason why cities are a standing menace to the integrity of the social compact is the fact that they are dominated by selfishness. It is in cities that the unnatural, unwholesome desire to live without labor, to live by speculative enterprises, becomes a consuming passion, inoculating with a deeper and darker degree of selfishness an ever-widening circle of people; and selfishness at last inevitably leads to anarchy. It leads to anarchy and chaos because both classes of society become depraved—the rich and powerful through indolence and sensual indulgence, and the poor and wretched through ignorance and privation and their attendant mean vices.

The modern city is the despair of the political economist. It grows relatively faster in population than the rural district, and it would be the extreme of optimism to declare that it grows better.[E4] It does not matter that the city is the centre of learning, the nursery of all the active intelligences which are achieving fresh triumphs daily in every department of science, literature, and art. It is also the centre of vice, and the nursery of every variety of crime.

The difficulty—nay, the despair—of the situation is not relieved or mitigated by the undisputed fact that the ancient city was much worse morally and politically than the modern city, and hence that as between Rome and Chicago there is an immense moral and political advantage in favor of the latter. If Chicago is retrograding morally and politically, what is to prevent it from sinking to the moral and political status of Rome under the infamous emperors of the period of its decadence? If the modern American city is rapidly degenerating, both as a moral force and a political institution, what is to arrest its downward progress? What influence is to intervene to reverse the order and nature of its development?

Rome, in the very agonies of political dissolution, possessed all the then known arts, a splendid literature, and a school of philosophy whose ethical code was more lofty, if less human, than that of the new system which was struggling to replace the old. That the inconceivably atrocious gladiatorial games should have developed into such huge proportions in conjunction with the sublime moral teachings of Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and a score of others, is the despair of students of Roman history. While they taught, emperors and people alike feasted their eyes on bloody orgies of men and beasts, on scenes of the most horrible barbarity. Caligula took special delight in watching the countenances of the dying, “for he had learned to take an artistic pleasure in observing the variations of their agony.” Criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts were thrown to bulls which were maddened with red-hot irons. “Four hundred bears were killed in a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan the games continued for one hundred and twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle.”

And yet the civilization that produced these games gave to the world, forever, the moral precepts of the stoics and philosophers. Cicero had maintained the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. “Nature ordains,” he says, “that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason: that he is a man.” Menander maintained that “man should deem nothing human foreign to his interest.” Lucan looked forward to the time when “the human race will cast aside its weapons, and all nations learn to love.” In a letter on the death of his slaves Pliny exhibited feelings of strong human affection, and Plutarch, in a letter of consolation to his wife on the death of his daughter, left a touching record of the tenderness of his heart in the recital of a simple trait of the child: “She desired her nurse to press even her dolls to the breast. She was so loving that she wished everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best that she had.” Says Seneca, “The whole universe which you see around you, comprising all things both divine and human, is one. We are members of one great body.” And Epictetus, “You are a citizen and a part of the world. The duty of a citizen is in nothing to consider his own interest distinct from that of others.”

The contrast between these noble moral sentiments and the actual life of the Roman people is truly startling.[E5] It is plain that the profession of lofty moral sentiments by a class, the possession of high literary attainments, and an extensive acquaintance with the arts, do not always afford protection against national degradation and decay. Nor is it by any means certain that the Christian religion is destined to effect more in this regard than the pagan code of morals. Rome embraced religion, but its conversion was powerless to avert political and commercial destruction.

The modern city has for guides the example of all the ancient civilizations and political and moral systems, and in addition it has, in its most vital form, the Christian system of morals and faith. But notwithstanding all these helps it is politically corrupt and morally depraved. Its streets are the scenes of vice scarcely less revolting than those of ancient Rome. It harbors an army of criminals which grows with its growth, and is without any systematized effort either to reform or abolish it. Indeed this army of criminals is constantly reinforced in an increasing ratio to the whole population from the ranks of the rising generation, which is to a degree enforced to ignorance by the inadequacy of educational facilities.[12] Its power to accumulate wealth is increasing, but this power is confined to relatively fewer hands, and this is one of the most alarming features of the situation. For the increase of ignorance, vice, and crime is sure to keep pace with the abnormal growth of estates, stimulated to the highest degree by dishonest business practices and gigantic schemes of speculation.

It does not follow because prevailing methods of education promote the spirit of selfishness, and hence contain the seeds of social and moral decay, that they are wholly vicious; but it does follow, if they are not positively wrong, that they are negatively wrong. Let us assume that they are only negatively wrong, that they lack an essential element in all mental and moral training—the manual element; and let us try to discover what would be the effect of the incorporation of this element into the curriculum of the schools.

A system of education consisting exclusively of mental exercises promotes selfishness because such training is subjective. Its effects flow inward; they relate to self. All mental acquirements become a part of self, and so remain forever, unless they are transmuted into things through the agency of the hand.

It is through the hand alone that the mind finally impresses itself upon matter. In other words, thought and speech must be incarnate in things or they are dead. The orator appeals to the people to strike for their rights; the people rend the air with shouts and subside into silence. The orator cries, “To Arms!” Again the people shout, and again subside into silence. The orator’s thoughts are of carnage, his words of flames, but they are as dead as if never uttered because no hand is raised to embody them in deeds.

Manual training, on the other hand, promotes altruism because it is objective. Its effects flow outward; they relate not to self but to the human race. The skilled hand confers benefits upon man, and each benefit so conferred exerts the natural reflex moral influence of a good act upon the mind of the benefactor.[E6]

Morality is not a mere sentiment, a barren ideality. It is true there is a negative morality which consists in refraining from the commission of wrongful acts. But the morality of the great ethical teachers is positive; it consists in doing. Christ said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Words without acts are as dead as faith without works. Paul said, “Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”

Morality is a vital principle whose exemplification consists in doing justice; and justice is that virtue “which consists in giving to every one what is his due; practical conformity to the laws and to principles of rectitude in the dealings of men with each other; honesty, integrity in commerce or mutual intercourse.” It follows that morality can no more be acquired by memorizing a series of maxims than the art of using tools can be acquired by studying the laws of mechanics and of mechanism.