Thoughts on Man

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But it will often be found, in these schools for more ordinary
education, as in the school for classical instruction, that the
majority of the pupils will be seen to be unpromising, and, what
is usually called, dull. The mistake is, that the persons by
whom this is perceived, are disposed to set aside these pupils as
blockheads, and unsusceptible of any species of ingenuity.

It is unreasonable that we should draw such a conclusion.

In the first place, as has been already observed, it is the most
difficult thing in the world for the schoolmaster to inspire into
his pupil the desire to do his best. An overwhelming majority of
lads at school are in their secret hearts rebels to the
discipline under which they are placed. The instructor draws,
one way, and the pupil another. The object of the latter is to
find out how he may escape censure and punishment with the
smallest expence of scholastic application. He looks at the task
that is set him, without the most distant desire of improvement,
but with alienated and averted eye. And, where this is the case,
the wonder is not that he does not make a brilliant figure. It
is rather an evidence of the slavish and subservient spirit
incident to the majority of human beings, that he learns any
thing. Certainly the schoolmaster, who judges of the powers of
his pupil's mind by the progress he makes in what he would most
gladly be excused from learning, must be expected perpetually to
fall into the most egregious mistakes.

The true test of the capacity of the individual, is where the
desire to succeed, and accomplish something effective, is already
awakened in the youthful mind. Whoever has found out what it is
in which he is qualified to excel, from that moment becomes a new
creature. The general torpor and sleep of the soul, which is
incident to the vast multitude of the human species, is departed
from him. We begin, from the hour in which our limbs are enabled
to exert themselves freely, with a puerile love of sport.
Amusement is the order of the day. But no one was ever so fond
of play, that he had not also his serious moments. Every human
creature perhaps is sensible to the stimulus of ambition. He is
delighted with the thought that he also shall be somebody, and
not a mere undistinguished pawn, destined to fill up a square in
the chess-board of human society. He wishes to be thought
something of, and to be gazed upon. Nor is it merely the wish to
be admired that excites him: he acts, that he may be satisfied
with himself. Self-respect is a sentiment dear to every heart.
The emotion can with difficulty be done justice to, that a man
feels, who is conscious that he is breathing his true element,
that every stroke that he strikes will have the effect he
designs, that he has an object before him, and every moment
approaches nearer to that object. Before, he was wrapped in an
opake cloud, saw nothing distinctly, and struck this way and that
at hazard like a blind man. But now the sun of understanding has
risen upon him; and every step that he takes, he advances with an
assured and undoubting confidence.

It is an admirable remark, that the book which we read at the
very time that we feel a desire to read it, affords us ten times
the improvement, that we should have derived from it when it was
taken up by us as a task. It is just so with the man who chooses
his occupation, and feels assured that that about which he is
occupied is his true and native field. Compare this person with
the boy that studies the classics, or arithmetic, or any thing
else, with a secret disinclination, and, as Shakespear expresses
it, "creeps like snail, unwillingly, to school." They do not seem
as if they belonged to the same species.

The result of these observations certainly strongly tends to
support the proposition laid down early in the present Essay,
that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases out of the question,
every human creature is endowed with talents, which, if rightly
directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and
acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted
him.

SECTION III.

ENCOURAGING VIEW OF OUR COMMON NATURE.--POWER OF SOUND EXPOSITION
AFFORDED TO ALL.--DOCTRINE OF THIS ESSAY AND THE HYPOTHESIS OF
HELVETIUS COMPARED.--THE WILLING AND UNWILLING PUPIL
CONTRASTED.--MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY OF THE USUAL MODES OF
EDUCATION.

What a beautiful and encouraging view is thus afforded us of our
common nature! It is not true, as certain disdainful and
fastidious censurers of their fellow-men would persuade us to
believe, that a thousand seeds are sown in the wide field of
humanity, for no other purpose than that half-a-dozen may grow up
into something magnificent and splendid, and that the rest,
though not absolutely extinguished in the outset, are merely
suffered to live that they may furnish manure and nourishment to
their betters. On the contrary, each man, according to this
hypothesis, has a sphere in which he may shine, and may
contemplate the exercise of his own powers with a well-grounded
satisfaction. He produces something as perfect in its kind, as
that which is effected under another form by the more brilliant
and illustrious of his species. He stands forward with a serene
confidence in the ranks of his fellow-creatures, and says, "I
also have my place in society, that I fill in a manner with which
I have a right to be satisfied." He vests a certain portion of
ingenuity in the work he turns out. He incorporates his mind
with the labour of his hands; and a competent observer will find
character and individuality in it.

He has therefore nothing of the sheepishness of the ordinary
schoolboy, the tasks imposed upon whom by his instructor are
foreign to the true bent of his mind, and who stands cowed before
his seniors, shrinking under the judgment they may pass upon him,
and the oppression they may exercise towards him. He is probably
competent to talk in a manner that may afford instruction to men
in other respects wise and accomplished, and is no less clear and
well-digested in his discourse respecting the subjects to which
his study and labour have been applied, than they are on the
questions that have exercised the powers of analysis with which
they are endowed. Like Elihu in the Book of Job, he says, "I am
young, and you are old; I said therefore, Days shall speak, and
multitude of years shall teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in
man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him
understanding. Great men are not always wise; neither do the
aged understand judgment. Hearken therefore to me; and I also
will shew my opinion."

What however in the last instance is affirmed, is not always
realised in the experiment. The humblest mechanic, who works con
amore, and feels that he discharges his office creditably, has a
sober satisfaction in the retrospect, and is able to express
himself perspicuously and well on the subject that has occupied
his industry. He has a just confidence in himself. If the
occasion arises, on which he should speak on the subject of what
he does, and the methods he adopts for effecting it, he will
undoubtedly acquit himself to the satisfaction of those who hear
him. He knows that the explanations he can afford will be sound
and masculine, and will stand the test of a rigid examination.

But, in proportion as he feels the ground on which he stands, and
his own power to make it good, he will not fail to retire from an
audience that is not willing to be informed by him. He will
often appear in the presence of those, whom the established
arrangements of society call his superiors, who are more
copiously endowed with the treasures of language, and who,
confident perhaps in the advantage of opulence, and what is
called, however they may have received it, a liberal education,
regard with disdain his artless and unornamented explanations.
He did not, it may be, expect this. And, having experienced
several times such unmerited treatment, he is not willing again
to encounter it. He knew the worth of what he had to offer.
And, finding others indisposed to listen to his suggestions, he
contentedly confines them within the circle of his own thoughts.

To this it must be added that, though he is able to explain
himself perspicuously, yet he is not master of the graces of
speech, nor even perhaps of the niceties of grammar. His voice
is not tuned to those winning inflections by which men,
accustomed to the higher ranks of society, are enabled so to
express themselves,

That aged ears play truant at their tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble is their discourse.

On the contrary there is a ruggedness in his manner that jars
upon the sense. It is easy for the light and supercilious to
turn him into ridicule. And those who will not be satisfied with
the soundness of his matter, expounded, as he is able to expound
it, in clear and appropriate terms, will yield him small credit,
and listen to him with little delight.

These considerations therefore bring us back again to the reasons
of the prevalent opinion, that the majority of mankind are dull,
and of apprehension narrow and confused. The mass of boys in the
process of their education appear so, because little of what is
addressed to them by their instructors, awakens their curiosity,
and inspires them with the desire to excel. The concealed spark
of ambition is not yet cleared from the crust that enveloped it
as it first came from the hand of nature. And in like manner the
elder persons, who have not experienced the advantages of a
liberal education, or by whom small profit was made by those
advantages, being defective in exterior graces, are generally
listened to with impatience, and therefore want the confidence
and the inclination to tell what they know.

But these latter, if they are not attended to upon the subjects
to which their attention and ingenuity have been applied, do not
the less possess a knowledge and skill which are intrinsically
worthy of applause. They therefore contentedly shut up the sum
of their acquisitions in their own bosoms, and are satisfied with
the consciousness that they have not been deficient in performing
an adequate part in the generation of men among whom they live.

Those persons who favour the opinion of the incessant
improveableness of the human species, have felt strongly prompted
to embrace the creed of Helvetius, who affirms that the minds of
men, as they are born into the world, are in a state of equality,
alike prepared for any kind of discipline and instruction that
may be afforded them, and that it depends upon education only, in
the largest sense of that word, including every impression that
may be made upon the mind, intentional or accidental, from the
hour of our birth, whether we shall be poets or philosophers,
dancers or singers, chemists or mathematicians, astronomers or
dissectors of the faculties of our common nature.

But this is not true. It has already appeared in the course of
this Essay, that the talent, or, more accurately speaking, the
original suitableness of the individual for the cultivation, of
music or painting, depends upon certain peculiarities that we
bring into the world with us. The same thing may be affirmed of
the poet. As, in the infinite variety of human beings, there are
no two faces so alike that they cannot be distinguished, nor even
two leaves plucked from the same tree, so there are varieties in
the senses, the organs, and the internal structure of the human
species, however delicate, and to the touch of the bystander
evanescent, which give to each individual a predisposition to
rise to excellence in one particular art or attainment, rather
than in any other.

And this view of things, if well considered, is as favourable,
nay, more so, to the hypothesis of the successive improveableness
of the human species, as the creed of Helvetius. According to
that philosopher, every human creature that is born into the
world, is capable of becoming, or being made, the equal of Homer,
Bacon or Newton, and as easily and surely of the one as the
other. This creed, if sincerely embraced, no doubt affords a
strong stimulus to both preceptor and pupil, since, if true, it
teaches us that any thing can be made of any thing, and that,
wherever there is mind, it is within the compass of possibility,
not only that that mind can be raised to a high pitch of
excellence, but even to a high pitch of that excellence, whatever
it is, that we shall prefer to all others, and most earnestly
desire.

Still this creed will, after all, leave both preceptor and pupil
in a state of feeling considerably unsatisfactory. What it sets
before us, is too vast and indefinite. We shall be left long
perhaps in a state of balance as to what species of excellence we
shall choose; and, in the immense field of accessible improvement
it offers to us, without land-mark or compass for the direction
of our course, it is scarcely possible that we should feel that
assured confidence and anticipation of success, which are perhaps
indispensibly required to the completion of a truly arduous
undertaking.

But, upon the principles laid down in this Essay, the case is
widely different. We are here presented in every individual
human creature with a subject better fitted for one sort of
cultivation than another. We are excited to an earnest study of
the individual, that we may the more unerringly discover what
pursuit it is for which his nature and qualifications especially
prepare him. We may be long in choosing. We may be even on the
brink of committing a considerable mistake. Our subsequent
observations may enable us to correct the inference we were
disposed to make from those which went before. Our sagacity is
flattered by the result of the laborious scrutiny which this view
of our common nature imposes upon us.

In addition to this we reap two important advantages.

In the first place, we feel assured that every child that is born
has his suitable sphere, to which if he is devoted, he will not
fail to make an honourable figure, or, in other words, will be
seen to be endowed with faculties, apt, adroit, intelligent and
acute. This consideration may reasonably stimulate us to call up
all our penetration for the purpose of ascertaining the proper
destination of the child for whom we are interested.

And, secondly, having arrived at this point, we shall find
ourselves placed in a very different predicament from the
guardian or instructor, who, having selected at random the
pursuit which his fancy dictates, and in the choice of which he
is encouraged by the presumptuous assertions of a wild
metaphysical philosophy, must often, in spite of himself, feel a
secret misgiving as to the final event. He may succeed, and
present to a wondering world a consummate musician, painter,
poet, or philosopher; for even blind chance may sometimes hit the
mark, as truly as the most perfect skill. But he will probably
fail. Sudet multum, frustraque laboret. And, if he is
disappointed, he will not only feel that disappointment in the
ultimate result, but also in every step of his progress. When he
has done his best, exerted his utmost industry, and consecrated
every power of his soul to the energies he puts forth, he may
close every day, sometimes with a faint shadow of success, and
sometimes with entire and blank miscarriage. And the latter will
happen ten thousand times, for once that the undertaking shall be
blessed with a prosperous event.

But, when the destination that is given to a child has been
founded upon a careful investigation of the faculties, tokens,
and accidental aspirations which characterise his early years, it
is then that every step that is made with him, becomes a new and
surer source of satisfaction. The moment the pursuit for which
his powers are adapted is seriously proposed to him, his eyes
sparkle, and a second existence, in addition to that which he
received at his birth, descends upon him. He feels that he has
now obtained something worth living for. He feels that he is at
home, and in a sphere that is appropriately his own. Every
effort that he makes is successful. At every resting-place in
his race of improvement he pauses, and looks back on what he has
done with complacency. The master cannot teach him so fast, as
he is prompted to acquire.

What a contrast does this species of instruction exhibit, to the
ordinary course of scholastic education! There, every lesson that
is prescribed, is a source of indirect warfare between the
instructor and the pupil, the one professing to aim at the
advancement of him that is taught, in the career of knowledge,
and the other contemplating the effect that is intended to be
produced upon him with aversion, and longing to be engaged in any
thing else, rather than in that which is pressed upon his
foremost attention. In this sense a numerous school is, to a
degree that can scarcely be adequately described, the
slaughter-house of mind. It is like the undertaking, related by
Livy, of Accius Navius, the augur, to cut a whetstone with a
razor--with this difference, that our modern schoolmasters are
not endowed with the gift of working miracles, and, when the
experiment falls into their hands, the result of their efforts is
a pitiful miscarriage. Knowledge is scarcely in any degree
imparted. But, as they are inured to a dogged assiduity, and
persist in their unavailing attempts, though the shell of
science, so to speak, is scarcely in the smallest measure
penetrated, yet that inestimable gift of the author of our being,
the sharpness of human faculties, is so blunted and destroyed,
that it can scarcely ever be usefully employed even for those
purposes which it was originally best qualified to effect.

A numerous school is that mint from which the worst and most
flagrant libels on our nature are incessantly issued. Hence it
is that we are taught, by a judgment everlastingly repeated, that
the majority of our kind are predestinated blockheads.

Not that it is by any means to be recommended, that a little
writing and arithmetic, and even the first rudiments of classical
knowledge, so far as they can be practicably imparted, should be
withheld from any. The mischief is, that we persist, month after
month, and year after year, in sowing our seed, when it has
already been fully ascertained, that no suitable and wholsome
crop will ever be produced.

But what is perhaps worse is, that we are accustomed to
pronounce, that that soil, which will not produce the crop of
which we have attempted to make it fertile, is fit for nothing.
The majority of boys, at the very period when the buds of
intellect begin to unfold themselves, are so accustomed to be
told that they are dull and fit for nothing, that the most
pernicious effects are necessarily produced. They become half
convinced by the ill-boding song of the raven, perpetually
croaking in their ears; and, for the other half, though by no
means assured that the sentence of impotence awarded against them
is just, yet, folding up their powers in inactivity, they are
contented partly to waste their energies in pure idleness and
sport, and partly to wait, with minds scarcely half awake, for
the moment when their true destination shall be opened before
them.

Not that it is by any means to be desired. that the child in his
earlier years should meet with no ruggednesses in his way, and
that he should perpetually tread "the primrose path of
dalliance." Clouds and tempests occasionally clear the atmosphere
of intellect, not less than that of the visible world. The road
to the hill of science, and to the promontory of heroic virtue,
is harsh and steep, and from time to time puts to the proof the
energies of him who would ascend their topmost round.

There are many things which every human creature should learn, so
far as, agreeably to the constitution of civilised society, they
can be brought within his reach. He should be induced to learn
them, willingly if possible, but, if that cannot be thoroughly
effected, yet with half a will. Such are reading, writing,
arithmetic, and the first principles of grammar; to which shall
be added, as far as may be, the rudiments of all the sciences
that are in ordinary use. The latter however should not be
brought forward too soon; and, if wisely delayed, the tyro
himself will to a certain degree enter into the views of his
instructor, and be disposed to essay Quid valeant humeri, quid
ferre recusent. But, above all, the beginnings of those studies
should be encouraged, which unfold the imagination, familiarise
us with the feelings, the joys and sufferings of our
fellow-beings, and teach us to put ourselves in their place and
eagerly fly to their assistance.

SECTION IV.

HOW FAR OUR GENUINE PROPENSITIES AND VOCATION SHOULD BE
FAVOURED.--SELF-REVERENCE RECOMMENDED.--CONCLUSION.

I knew a man of eminent intellectual faculties[3], one of whose
favourite topics of moral prudence was, that it is the greatest
mistake in the world to suppose, that, when we have discovered
the special aspiration of the youthful mind, we are bound to do
every thing in our power to assist its progress. He maintained
on the contrary, that it is our true wisdom to place obstacles in
its way, and to thwart it: as we may be well assured that,
unless it is a mere caprice, it will shew its strength in
conquering difficulties, and that all the obstacles that we can
conjure up will but inspire it with the greater earnestness to
attain final success.

[3] Henry Fuseli.

The maxim here stated, taken to an unlimited extent, is doubtless
a very dangerous one. There are obstacles that scarcely any
strength of man would be sufficient to conquer. "Chill penury"
will sometimes "repress the noblest rage," that almost ever
animated a human spirit: and our wisest course will probably be,
secretly to favour, even when we seem most to oppose, the genuine
bent of the youthful aspirer.

But the thing of greatest importance is, that we should not teach
him to estimate his powers at too low a rate. One of the wisest
of all the precepts comprised in what are called the Golden
Verses of Pythagoras, is that, in which he enjoins his pupil to
"reverence himself." Ambition is the noblest root that can be
planted in the garden of the human soul: not the ambition to be
applauded and admired, to be famous and looked up to, to be the
darling theme of "stupid starers and of loud huzzas;" but the
ambition to fill a respectable place in the theatre of society,
to be useful and to be esteemed, to feel that we have not lived
in vain, and that we are entitled to the most honourable of all
dismissions, an enlightened self-approbation. And nothing can
more powerfully tend to place this beyond our acquisition, even
our contemplation, than the perpetual and hourly rebuffs which
ingenuous youth is so often doomed to sustain from the
supercilious pedant, and the rigid decision of his unfeeling
elders.

Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of
the most valuable results of a well conducted education. To
accomplish this, it is most necessary that it should never be
inculcated into him, that he is dull. Upon the principles of
this Essay, any unfavourable appearances that may present
themselves, do not arise from the dulness of the pupil, but from
the error of those upon whose superintendence he is cast, who
require of him the things for which he is not adapted, and
neglect those in which he is qualified to excel.

It is further necessary, if self-respect is one of the most
desirable results of a well-conducted education, that, as we
should not humble the pupil in his own eyes by disgraceful and
humiliating language, so we should abstain, as much as possible,
from personal ill-treatment, and the employing towards him the
measures of an owner towards his purchased or indentured slave.
Indignity is of all things the most hostile to the best purposes
of a liberal education. It may be necessary occasionally to
employ, towards a human creature in his years of nonage, the
stimulants of exhortation and remonstrance even in the pursuits
to which he is best adapted, for the purpose of overcoming the
instability and fits of idleness to which all men, and most of
all in their early years, are subject: though in such pursuits a
necessity of this sort can scarcely be supposed. The bow must
not always be bent; and it is good for us that we should
occasionally relax and play the fool. It may more readily be
imagined, that some incitement may be called for in those things
which, as has been mentioned above, it may be fit he should learn
though with but half a will. All freaks must not be indulged;
admonition is salutary, and that the pupil should be awakened by
his instructor to sober reflection and to masculine exertion.
Every Telemachus should have his Mentor.--But through the whole
it is necessary that the spirit of the pupil should not be
broken, and that he should not be treated with contumely.
Stripes should in all instances be regarded as the last resort,
and as a sort of problem set up for the wisdom of the wise to
solve, whether the urgent case can arise in which it shall be
requisite to have recourse to them.

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