The Training of the Merchant, the Lawyer, the Judge, and the Legislator contrasted with that of the Artisan. — The Training of the Merchant makes him Selfish, and Selfishness breeds Dishonesty. — Professional Men become Speculative Philosophers, and test their Speculations by Consciousness. — The Artisan forgets Self in the Study of Things. — The Search after Truth. — The Story of Palissy. — The Hero is the Normal Man; those who Marvel at his Acts are abnormally Developed. — Savonarola and John Brown. — The New England System of Education contrasted with that of the South. — American Statesmanship — its Failure in an Educational Point of View. — Why the State Provides for Education; to protect Property. — The British Government and the Land Question. — The Thoroughness of the Training given by Schools of Mechanic Art and Institutes of Technology as shown in Things. — Story of the Emperor of Germany and the Needle-maker. — The Iron Bridge lasts a Century, the Act of the Legislator wears out in a Year. — The Cause of the Failures of Justice and Legislation. — The best Law is the Act that Repeals a Law; but the Act of the Inventor is never Repealed. — Things the Source and Issue of Ideas; hence the Necessity of Training in the Arts.

There is a cause for the failure of the merchant, the lawyer, the judge, and the legislator, as well as for the success of the artisan. And the cause must be sought in the courses of training, respectively, of the two classes. Let us assume that the artisan and the merchant, the lawyer, the judge, and the legislator, graduate at the same time from the public high school, or from Harvard or Yale. The merchant at once begins to trade, to buy and sell. He concerns himself with things only as they have a value, either naturally arising from the law of demand and supply, or arbitrarily imposed by circumstances. His consideration of the relations of things is confined to the single question of the percentage of profit which may accrue to him from traffic in them. These are subjective processes of thought, and the merchant becomes absorbed in them to the exclusion of all other topics. It goes without saying that he becomes intensely selfish. The struggle is one of mercantile life or death—ninety-three to ninety-seven in a hundred die; three to seven survive.

Among merchants there is, hence, very little thought of the subject of justice, and no effort to discover truth. There must, at the end of the year, be a favorable balance on the right side of the ledger, or the balance on the wrong side unerringly points the way to ruin. This is the post-school training of the merchant. That neither it nor his previous education renders him skilful we know, since he fails ninety-three to ninety-seven times in a hundred trials. That subjective training does not and never can promote rectitude has been shown in a former chapter of this work. That merchants who compromise with their creditors, and subsequently accumulate fortunes, very rarely repay the debt formerly forgiven is a notorious fact. A Chicago merchant who himself repaid such a composition debt early in his career, states, at the end of twenty-five years’ experience, that of compromises involving several hundred thousand dollars, made by him in favor of debtors, not one dollar has ever been repaid.

Upon leaving school or college the lawyer, the judge, and the legislator at once apply themselves to books; their subsequent training is exclusively subjective. Their ideas receive color from, and are verified only by reference to, consciousness. Subjective truths have no relations to things, and hence are susceptible of verification only through consciousness. They are, therefore, mere speculations after all, often ingenious but always problematical. The result of such training is selfishness—selfishness of a very intense character; and, as has been already shown, selfishness is merely another name for injustice.

On the other hand the artisan devotes himself to things. His training is exclusively objective. His ideas flow outward; he studies the nature and relations of things. In this investigation he forgets self because his life becomes a grand struggle in search of truth; and the discovery of truth in things, if not easy, is ultimately sure of attainment, since harmony is its sign, and its opposite, the false, is certain of exposure through its native deformity; for however alluring a lie may be made to appear in the abstract, in the concrete it is a monster unmasked.

From the false the artisan intuitively shrinks. He can only succeed by finding the truth, and embodying it in some useful or beautiful thing which will contribute to the comfort or pleasure of man. Hence his watchword is utility, or, beauty in utility. Of the engrossing character of this struggle the story of Bernard Palissy affords a splendid illustration. Palissy was an artist, a student, and a naturalist, but poor, and compelled to follow the profession of surveying to support his family. At the age of thirty he saw an enamelled cup, of Italian manufacture, which fired his ambition. Ignorant of the nature of clays, he nevertheless resolved to discover enamel, and entered upon a laborious course of investigation and experiment with that end in view. After many years of Herculean effort and indescribable privation, which beggared and estranged his family, and rendered him an object of ridicule among his neighbors, he achieved a grand success. At a critical period of his experiments, in the face of the indignant protests of his almost starving family, having exhausted his credit to the last penny, he consigned to the flames of his furnace the chairs, tables, and floors of his humble cottage, and continued to watch his chemicals with all-absorbing attention, while his wife in despair rushed through the streets making loud proclamation of the scandal.

But Palissy was more than a potter; he was a Christian, a philosopher, and an austere reformer. Notwithstanding he had been petted and patronized as an ingenious artisan by the royal family of France, he was finally cast into prison under charge of heresy. It was there that the remarkable interview with King Henry III. occurred, which immortalized Palissy as a hero. “My good man,” said the king, “you have been forty-five years in the service of the queen, my mother, or in mine, and we have suffered you to live in your own religion, amid all the executions and the massacres. Now, however, I am so pressed by the Guise party and my people that I have been compelled in spite of myself to imprison these two poor women and you.” “Sire,” answered the old man, “the count came yesterday on your part, promising life to these two sisters upon condition of the sacrifice of their virtue. They replied that they would now be martyrs to their own honor as well as for the honor of God. You have said several times that you feel pity for me; but it is I who pity you, who have said, ‘I am compelled!’ That is not speaking like a king. These girls and I, who have part in the kingdom of heaven—we will teach you to talk royally. The Guisarts, all your people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to images of clay!”[63] And Palissy the potter and heretic, at the age of seventy, died in the Bastile, proudly defying a king.

The more absorbing the struggle for the discovery of truth the less room there is in the mind for selfishness; and as selfishness recedes, justice assumes its appropriate place as the controlling element in human conduct. The hero is an honest man, that’s all,—

If all men were heroes—honest—there would be no occasion for heroism. If all education can be made scientific, all men can be made honest. The struggle to find truth is more natural than the struggle to succeed regardless of, or against, truth. The reason why what we call heroism appears so grand is this: the standards of public judgment have become so perverted by long custom in the abuse of truth, that normal conduct appears strange.

When Palissy burned his chairs and tables in the cause of art, his family and his neighbors derided him, and denounced him as a madman, and in prison the king urged him, as a friend, to save himself from death by recanting his assertion of the right of freedom of religious opinion. Palissy was a hero neither to his family, his friends, nor his king;[64] but he was right, and his discovery and his firmness rendered him immortal. We now know, three hundred years farther down the course of time, that Palissy’s struggle over the furnace in the cause of art was mentally and morally normal, while the opposition he encountered was abnormal; and that his defiance of the king was mentally and morally normal, while his persecution was abnormal and cruel.

Palissy’s mind was trained naturally in the direction of rectitude, while the minds of the millions of men who permitted him to die unfriended, a prisoner in the Bastile, were developed unnaturally. Their education was unscientific, and their characters were hence deformed. The one symmetrical character was that of Palissy, the lover of truth, who was ready to starve, if need be, for his art, and ready to die for his faith. The thin ranks of the so-called heroes of the ages of history constitute the measure of the poverty of the systems of education that have prevailed among mankind. These so-called heroes are merely normally developed men—men who search for the truth, and having found it, honor it always and everywhere. They are peculiar to no clime, to no country, to no age. They are cosmopolitan, and the fact that they are honored, after death, by succeeding ages is proof positive of the world’s progress, or rather of the progress of moral ideas.

The civilization of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century presents the most violent possible contrast to that of America in the last half of the nineteenth century. But the one produced Savonarola, the hater of abuses in the Roman Catholic Church, and the other John Brown, the stern, uncompromising hater of human bondage. Four hundred years is a long period in the history of civilization; but the priest of the fifteenth century, and the farmer of the nineteenth, are as near of kin in spirit, as if they had been born of the same mother, and reared in the same moral atmosphere.

The true hero is always inexorable—as Savonarola in the presence of the majesty of a dying, remorse-stricken, half-repentant prince, and John Brown in the presence of his exultant but half-terrified captors. When Lorenzo di Medici lay terror-stricken, on his death-bed, Savonarola demanded of the dying prince, as the price of absolution, a restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence; and this being refused, the priest departed without one word of peace.

When John Brown, wounded and bleeding, lay a captive at Harper’s Ferry, listening to the taunts of angry Virginians, he said, calmly and firmly, “You had better—all you people of the South—prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you commence that preparation the better for you. You may dispose of me very easily—I am nearly disposed of now—but this question is still to be settled—this negro question, I mean. The end of that is not yet.”[65]

There is nothing grander in history, whether real or mythological, than the picture of the humble priest of the fifteenth century, with no power except the justice of his cause, shaking thrones and making proud prelates, and even the Pope himself, tremble with fear! And the exact parallel of this picture is found, four hundred years down the stream of time, in the person of the farmer, John Brown, defying the Constitution, law, and public sentiment of his country in the interest simply of the cause of justice.

It has been shown through citations from the Walton report, as well as by the opinions of many competent witnesses, that the New England system of education, whether correct in theory or not, is, in actual operation, very defective. But at the time of its establishment it was the best system in existence. To it this country owes the quality of its civilization. The neglect of education by the Government of the United States is the most astonishing fact of its history. It is incomprehensible how, with a comparatively excellent educational system in operation, and in full view in the New England, Middle, and Western States, the National Government could calmly and inactively contemplate the almost entire neglect of popular education in the States of the South, and ignore, from year to year, the steadily accumulating horrors of ignorance and vice which were destined to lead to such deplorable political and social results.

The difference between the civilization of New England and that of South Carolina, for example, is exactly measured by the difference between their respective educational systems. New England undertook, at a very early day, to educate every class of its citizens; South Carolina made a monopoly of education, confining it to a single class.

It must be admitted that the American statesmanship of the whole period of our history has been scarcely less short-sighted than that of England under the Georges, which resulted in saddling upon her people a debt that they can never pay. If England had provided a comprehensive and scientific system of popular education at the beginning of the eighteenth century, who doubts that the wars through which her debt was incurred would have been averted? If the Government of the United States had compelled the adoption of a scientific educational system by the States of the South, who doubts that slavery would have peaceably passed away, and the occasion for war passed away with it?

The conspicuous failure of American statesmanship consists in a failure to appreciate the value of scientific education, it shows that good citizenship is impossible without good education—for good education and good citizenship are convertible terms. And it is easy to show, by the past, that to hesitate on the subject of education is to be lost.[66]

Why do we provide for popular education? Is it out of pure generosity that the rich citizen consents to be taxed to pay for the education of his poor neighbor’s children? Does the man who has no children willingly surrender a portion of his estate for the education of the children of others, as an act of benevolence? Not at all. There is no security for property in a community devoid of education and consequent intelligence. Intelligence alone confers upon property a sacred character. In one of two ways only can property be rendered secure in the owner’s hands. It may be protected by a hired soldiery, through the force of arms,[E13] or through the force of public sentiment enlightened by education. The reason why the poor but educated citizen would not lay violent hands on the rich citizen’s property is the fact that he indulges the intelligent hope of himself acquiring property. Besides, the morals of a community are in the ratio of its intelligence. The indulgence of hope promotes self-esteem, and self-respect, and these qualities react ethically.

It should be borne in mind that while one of the main purposes of all governments is to preserve property rights, nearly all the governments of history have been shattered in pieces in the effort to fulfil this function of their existence. It may be said that there is never anything sacred about property unless it is honestly acquired. All the force of our own government was exerted in a vain effort to protect property in slaves. England has been compelled to disturb the property rights of the Irish landlords, and this is only the prelude to an attack upon the property rights of her own landlords. It was the ignorance of the English people hundreds of years ago that permitted the establishment of a land system which is now about to crumble in pieces, and in its fail wreck certain property rights.

There is nothing sacred about property unless it is honestly acquired and honestly held; and property can only be honestly acquired and honestly held, in communities intelligent enough to guard its acquisition, and continued possession, by just and adequate laws. It follows that education is the sole bulwark of the State, and so of property.

The question of the first consequence is, therefore, always, What is the best system of education? It is obvious, also, that the subject of cost should not enter into the discussion; that the best education is the cheapest, is an indisputable proposition. We have seen that the New England system of education, which has spread over the whole country, is very much better than the system which prevailed in those States of the Union where slavery continued to exist down to 1864. But we have seen, also, that that system is very defective; that it is automatic, and hence not natural, not practical, not scientific. It does not produce great merchants, great lawyers, great judges, or great legislators. That it does not, is abundantly shown by the fact that in mercantile life there are ninety-three to ninety-seven failures in every one hundred experiments; by the fact that there is notoriously a general failure of justice; and by the fact that here, as in Great Britain, the chief business of statesmen is the undoing of vicious legislation.

There is a system of training which produces a much higher average of culture than that of the public schools and the universities. We allude to the training received by the students of special mechanical and technical institutions, and by the apprentices in trade-shops. The proof of this is found in the world’s railways, ships, harbors, docks, canals, bridges, telegraph and telephone lines, and in a thousand and one other manifestations of skill in art. In the adaptation of means to an end, and in nicety of construction, the mechanic and the civil engineer show, in innumerable ways, with what thoroughness both their minds and their hands have been trained. If mercantile operations were governed by such excellent rules in projection, and by such precision in execution, ninety-seven merchants in a hundred would not go to the wall.

A story has lately gone the round of the public prints to the effect that, during a visit to a needle factory by the Emperor of Germany, a workman begged a hair of his head, bored an eye in it, threaded it, and handed it back to the monarch, who had expressed surprise that eyes could be bored in the smaller sizes of needles. It does not matter whether or not this story is literally true; it illustrates the delicacy of modern mechanical operations. Hundreds of similar illustrations might be given, showing how marvellously skilful the hand has become.

It is not claimed that the hand is a nicer instrument than the mind. As a matter of fact, in drilling the hole in the hair the mind and the hand work together—the mind directs the hand, we will say. The mind devises or invents a watch—every wheel, pinion, screw, and spring—and directs the hand how to make it, and how to set it up, and it ticks off the time. Why does the mind succeed so admirably when it employs the hand to execute its will, but so ill when it devises and attempts, itself, to execute? How is it that the mind invents a watch which, being made by the hand, records the hour to a second, ninety-nine times in a hundred, but fails ninety-three to ninety-seven times in a hundred to devise and carry into execution a mercantile venture? How is it that the mind invents a steam-engine consisting of a hundred pieces, so that, each piece being made by a different hand, the machine shall, when set up, ninety-nine times in a hundred, at once perform the work of five hundred horses without strain or friction, but when it grapples with law and fact in the chair of lawyer or judge produces a most pitiable wreck of justice? How is it that the mind devises and the hand executes with such nice adaptation of means to the end in view, a bridge, that resembles a spider’s web, and yet bears thousands of tons and endures for ages, but when it undertakes to legislate evolves statutes that wear out in a year? The first iron bridge constructed spanned the Severn, in England. It was opened to traffic a hundred years ago, but it is still a stanch structure likely to stand for centuries. Where are the English statutes of that time? Repealed to give place to a long line of others which in turn have been repealed. When the famous iron bridge across the Severn was constructed, English legislators were passing bills to compel the American colonies to trade only with the mother country, and to tax them without their consent. Lord Sheffield said, with charming frankness, that the colonies were founded with the sole view of securing to England a monopoly of their trade; and Lord Chatham declared that they would not be permitted to make even a nail or a horseshoe.

In 1516 Sir Thomas More denounced the criminal law of England, declaring that “the loss of money should not cause the loss of man’s life.”[67] But this humane and enlightened sentiment had so little weight that during the reign of Henry VIII. seventy-two thousand thieves were hanged—at the rate of two thousand a year. In 1785 twenty men were executed in London at one time for thefts of five shillings. The Lord Chief-justice and the Lord Chancellor agreed that it would be dangerous to repeal the law punishing pilfering by youths. In 1816 the Commons passed a bill abolishing capital punishment for shoplifting—stealing the value of five shillings—but the Lords defeated it, Lord Ellenborough, Chief-justice, observing, peevishly, “They want to alter these laws which a century has proved to be necessary, and which are now to be overturned by speculation and modern philosophy.”[68]

The cause of these failures—of mercantile ventures, of justice, and of legislation—is this: Subjective mental processes are automatic, and hence they neither generate power nor promote rectitude; they enfeeble rather than energize the brain. Men whose characters are formed by such educational processes never originate anything. They become selfish, they venerate the past, their eyes are turned backward; hence, if they sometimes make a feeble effort to move forward they stumble. The lawyer, the judge, and the legislator are examples of this class. Their guide-books are musty folios in a dead language; they look for “precedents” in an age whose civilization perished with its language, and whose maxims and rules of life were long ago exploded. Such men can be compelled to move forward only by the lash of public opinion. Buckle, speaking of the reforms extorted from the legislators of England, says,

“But it is a mere matter of history that our legislators, even to the last moment, were so terrified by the idea of innovation that they refused every reform until the voice of the people rose high enough to awe them into submission, and forced them to grant what without such pressure they would by no means have conceded.”[69]

On the other hand, the inventor, the discoverer, and the artisan are always in the advance, and always moving forward. They never look back except to catch the vital principle of the invention or discovery of yesterday for utilization in the improved machine of to-day. Their acts are never repealed because they never become odious. They never become odious because they contain the germs of imperishable truth. They are never false; they are suitable to their time and the stage of development; they constitute links in the chain of progress. While the legislator is horrified at the thought of innovation, the inventor, the discoverer, and the artisan are electrified by the discovery of a new principle in physics, and delighted at its application in a new invention, and its practical operation in a new and useful machine.

The difference in effects upon the mental and moral nature, between purely mental training and mental and manual training combined, is susceptible of logical explanation. It is only in things that the truth stands clearly revealed, and only in things that the false is sure of exposure.[70] Hence exclusively mental training stops far short of the objective point of true education. For if it be true that the last analysis of education is art, progress can find expression only in things—in the work of men’s hands. And it is true; for ideas are mere vain speculations until they are embodied in things. Nor is this materialism unless all civilization is material; for the prime difference between barbarism and civilization consists in the presence, in a state of civilization, of more things of use and beauty than are found in a state of barbarism. To exalt things is not materialistic; they are both the source and issue of ideas, and the measure of civilization. Ideas and things are hence indissolubly connected; and it follows that any system of education which separates them is radically defective.[71] Exclusively mental training does not produce a symmetrical character, because at best it merely teaches the student how to think, and the complement of thinking is acting. Before thoughts can have any influence whatever upon the world of mind and matter external to the mind originating them they must be expressed. They may be expressed feebly, through the voice, in words; more durably, and therefore more forcibly, with the pen, on paper; more forcibly still in drawing—pictures of things; and, with the superlative degree of force, in real things.

The object of education is the generation of power. But to generate and store up power, whether mental or physical, or both, is a waste of effort, unless the power is to be exerted. Why generate steam if there is no engine to be operated? Steam may be likened to an idea which finds expression through the engine—a thing. Why store the mind with facts—historical, philosophical, or mathematical—which are useless until applied to things, if they are not to be applied to things? And if they are to be applied to things, why not teach the art of so applying them? As a matter of fact, the system of education which does not do this is one-sided, incomplete, unscientific. Rousseau says, “Education itself is certainly nothing but habit.” If this be true, it will be conceded that the habit of expressing ideas in things should be formed in the schools, because the chief way in which man is benefited is through the expression of ideas in things. The system of education which tends to form this habit is that of the kindergarten and that of the manual training school. These systems are one in principle. They are not new; they at least date back to Bacon, who declared that he would “employ his utmost endeavors towards restoring or cultivating a just and legitimate familiarity betwixt the mind and things.” The kindergarten and the manual training school exactly realize Bacon’s idea. The idea of the manual training school was in the mind of Comenius when he said, “Let things that have to be done be learned by doing them.” It was in the mind of Pestalozzi when he said, “Education is the generation of power.” It was in the mind of Froebel, not less than the kindergarten, when he said, “The end and aim of all our work should be the harmonious growth of the whole being.”

These are excellent definitions of education, and they are sequential. If things that have to be done are learned by doing them, there will be in the course of the process a wholesome exercise of both body and mind, and this exercise will result in the generation of power—power to think well, and to do well; and the process being continued, the result cannot fail to be the harmonious growth of the whole being. This is scientific, as opposed to automatic, education.[72]