education at that time, must be, that it was at once too formal
and too luxurious; leaving my character, at the most iinpor-
126 EDUCATION
tant moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not
disciplined; and only by protection innocent, instead of by
practice virtuous. My mother saw this herself, and but too
clearly, in later years; and whenever I did anything wrong,
stupid, or hard-hearted, (and I have done many things that
were all three,) always said, "It is because you were too
much indulged. ' ' 46
The comprehensive conclusion is :
Thus, in perfect health of life and fire of heart, not want-
ing to be anything but the boy I was, not wanting to have
anything more than I had; knowing of sorrow only just so
much as to make life serious to me, not enough to slacken
in the least its sinews; and with so much of science mixed
with feeling as to make the sight of the Alps not only the
revelation of the beauty of the earth, but the opening of the
first page of its volume, I went down that evening from
the garden-terrace of Schaffhausen with my destiny fixed in
all of it that was to be sacred and useful. To that terrace,
and the shore of the Lake of Geneva, my heart and faith re-
turn to this day, in every impulse that is yet nobly alive in
them, and every thought that has in it help or peace. 47
A similar experience, and likewise far-reaching,
one recalls as occurring in the life of Charles Kings-
ley. Of Mr. Ruskin's life at Oxford, broken into
by his sickness, it is superfluous now to write. This
life apparently had little influence over his career.
""Praeterita," Cabinet Edition, Dana Estes & Co., pp. 38-40.
p. 98.
ACCORDING TO RUSKIN 127
He finally took a " complimentary double fourth."
His development was slow, but he finally came to
his large self.
I have no space in this story to describe the advantages I
never used ; nor does my own failure give me right to blame,
even were there any use in blaming, a system now passed
away. Oxford taught me as much Greek and Latin as she
could; and though I think she might also have told me that
fritillaries grew in Iffley meadow, it was better that she left
me to find them for myself, than that she should have told
me, as nowadays she would, that the painting on them was
only to amuse the midges. For the rest, the whole time I
was there, my mind was simply in the state of a squash
before 'tis a peascod, and remained so yet a year or two
afterward, I grieve to say; so that for any account of my
real life, the gossip hitherto given to its codling or cocoon
condition has brought us but a little way. I must get on to
the days of opening sight, and effective labor; and to the
scenes of nobler education which all men, who keep their
hearts open, receive in the End of Days. 48
As one reviews all that Mr. Ruskin wrote
through a half -century, and under diverse condi-
tions, on education, the question emerges: What
was the worthiest contribution which he made to
the great cause, and what, if any, was the defect or
weakness in his offering ? The answer is not far to
seek. Mr. Ruskin 's chief contribution lies in the
"Ibid., p. 210.
128 EDUCATION
emphasis he placed on, and in the analyses he made
of, the moral element in character and training.
By the moral element one does not mean merely
the ethical virtues, either major or minor, although
they are included. One does have in mind those
parts of character which are primarily spiritual
or non-intellectual. Perhaps no better single illus-
tration or example could be found than that which
is furnished by the Beatitudes of Christ. The love
for, and the making of peace, mercy, purity of
heart, meekness, are the supreme qualities which
he holds most dear. Obedience, faith, gentleness,
charity, are words which drop from his pen like
dew from the summer skies. To him, cruelty and
idleness are abominable. Like St. John, he is an
apostle of and to the heart. His seven lamps of
architecture are the lights which illumine every
human path. The stones of the city which he most
adores are laid with the fair colors of goodness
and tenderness and love.
Of such interpretation and of such emphasis
there is abundant need. In an age which delights
to call itself dynamic, and whose emblem is either
an electric bulb or a gas-engine, placed in an auto-
mobile, it is good to find accent put on qualities
which are neither splendid nor meretricious nor
ACCORDING TO RUSKIN 129
crass. It is indeed good to find the Divine Spirit
not in the whirlwind or the thunder, but in the
still, small voice.
This emphasis on the moral side also points out
the defect of his theory, as a shadow follows the
light. The defect lies in the lack of proper atten-
tion to the strictly intellectual side of education.
Although the intellect is a less important tool in
human progress than is supposed by most men, it
does have its great and unique place. Ruskin's
own desultory and broken course of education un-
consciously affects his theories. The scientific type
of mind he contemns. Of the masters in philoso-
phy, as Kant, he has slight knowledge. For the
clear light of truth without shadow or turning, free
from prejudice and devoid of passion, his mind has
slight affinity. He interprets quite as much with
the heart as with the brain. To think (although
he declares he wishes to be known as a thinker),
to reason, to judge, to weigh evidence, he lacked a
worthy and adequate power, even with all his
unique and tremendously great gifts.
For two of his own great contemporaries, John
Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin, he has either deri-
sion or sarcasm. Next to Turner, the most out-
standing object of his admiration is Thomas Car-
130 EDUCATION
lyle. He prefers the pre-Raphaelites to Raphael,
and Burne-Jones to Michael Angelo. His judg-
ment of personalities interprets his own person-
ality, and helps to determine the worth of his inter-
pretation of education.
IV
EDUCATION ACCORDING TO JOHN STUART MILL
THE men who were the leaders of thought and
action in England between the passage of
the Reform Bill of 1832 and the passage of the
Education Bill of 1870, were the ablest of all who
have lived since the great company of those who
flourished in the reign of Henry VIII. and of
Elizabeth. This large circle includes Peel,
Palmerston, Cobden, Brougham, Disraeli, Glad-
stone, Macaulay, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Brown-
ing, Tennyson, Darwin, Huxley and Spencer. In
this group, John Stuart Mill has a unique place.
Whether that place is large or small and most
would agree in thinking it is large it is certainly
a place unique in its breadth and intensity of
influence. Herbert Spencer said of Mill that
"during a considerable period his had been the
one conspicuous figure in the higher regions of
thought. So great, indeed, was his influence that
during the interval between, say 1840 and 1860, few
131
132 EDUCATION
dared to call his views in question. " * To the three
great provinces of economics, inductive logic and
of political science, he made rich contributions.
Yet in a smaller circle, and not unworthy, Mill
fills a place also central and commanding. This
circle was likewise impressive. It included Car-
lyle, Euskin, Bentham, George Grote, his early
friend for whom he pronounced a " well-done" in
his review of Aristotle, the Austins, Ricardo, Mau-
rice, the thinker, John Sterling, the poet, and his
own father. Mill was the worthy son of his father,
for, as Bain says in the biography of the father,
that
His Intellectual powers were of a high order is attested
by the work that he achieved. That his special characteristics
were such as we denominate by the terms scientific and logical,
is also apparent. His training in science was not even the
highest that the time could have permitted; he had, never-
theless, imbibed the scientific methods to a degree beyond most
of the professed votaries of science. In other words, he had
thoroughly mastered Evidence, and all the processes sub-
servient thereto. His training was aided by the old logicians,
and by the best models of clear reasoning that the philo-
sophical literature of the past could afford. 2
The exceptional place which Mill held in this
group, small in numbers, but great in weight, is
1 Herbert Spencer 'a Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 289.
* Bain's ''James Mill," p. 420.
ACCORDING TO JOHN STUART MILL 133
intimated by the interpretation made by one of the
younger members, the only one still surviving. In
writing of the death of Mill, John Morley says :
Even those whom Mr. Mill honoured with his friendship,
and who must always bear to his memory the affectionate ven-
eration of sons, may yet feel their pain at the thought that
they will see him no more, raised into a higher mood as they
meditate on the loftiness of his task and the steadfastness
and success with which he achieved it. If it is grievous to
think that such richness of culture, such full maturity of wis-
dom, such passion for truth and justice, are now by a single
stroke extinguished, at least we may find some not unworthy
solace in the thought of the splendid purpose that they have
served in keeping alive, and surrounding with new attractions,
the difficult tradition of patient and accurate thinking in
union with unselfish and magnanimous living. 8
Morley also says that with his reputation will
stand or fall the intellectual repute of a whole
generation of his countrymen. The most eminent
of those who are now so fast becoming the front
line, as death mows down the veterans, bear traces
of his influence, whether they are avowed disciples
or avowed opponents. For a score of years no
one at all open to serious intellectual impressions
left Oxford without being touched by the influence
of Mr. Mill's teaching. Yet it would be too much
to say that in that temple where they are ever
John Morley 'a "Critical Miscellanies, " VoL III., p. 38.
134 EDUCATION
burnishing new idols, his throne is still unshaken. The pro-
fessorial chairs there and elsewhere are more and more be-
ing filled with men whose minds have been trained in his prin-
ciples. The universities only typify his influence on the less
learned part of the world. The better sort of journalists
educated themselves on his books, and even the baser sort
acquired a habit of quoting from them. He is the only writer
in the world whose treatises on highly abstract subjects have
been printed during his lifetime in editions for the people,
and sold at the price of railway novels.*
Of him, directly upon his death, Carlyle said to
Charles Eliot Norton :
I never knew a finer, tenderer, more sensitive or modest
soul among the sons of men. 6
Such were some of the circumstances attending
the life of John Stuart Mill. Such also were cer-
tain of the personalities whom he influenced and
who influenced him. And such are something of
the intimations of the worth of his rich service to
humanity.
His own education was unique. His father was
his teacher. Never was a father more richly blessed
in a son of his intellectual, as well as of his physical,
loins. His own education he has described in many
pages which should be quoted at length.
/&td., p. 39.
'"Letters of Charles Eliot Norton," Vol. I., p. 495.
ACCORDING TO JOHN STUART MILL 135
I have no remembrance of the time when I began to learn
Greek, I have been told that it was when I was three years
old. My earliest recollection on the subject, is that of com-
mitting to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists
of common Greek words, with their signification in English,
which he wrote out for me on cards. Of grammar, until some
years later, I learnt no more than the inflexions of the nouns
and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once
to translation; and I faintly remember going through ^Esop's
Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The Anabasis,
which I remember better, was the second. I learnt no Latin
until my eighth year. At that time I had read, under my
father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among
whom I remember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon 's
Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates; some of the lives of
the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and
Isocrates ad Demonicum and Ad Nicoclem. I also read, in
1813, the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement)
of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theoctetus inclusive:
which last dialogue, I venture to think, would have been bet-
ter omitted, as it was totally impossible I should understand
it. But my father, in all his teaching, demanded of me not
only the utmost that I could do, but much that I could by
no possibility have done. What he was himself willing to
undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged from
the fact, that I went through the whole process of preparing
my Greek lessons in the same room and at the same table
at which he was writing: and as in those days Greek and
English lexicons were not, and I could make no more use of
a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be made without having
yet begun to learn Latin, I was forced to have recourse to
him for the meaning of every word which I did not know.
136 EDUCATION
This incessant interruption, he, one of the most impatient
of men, submitted to, and wrote under that interruption
several volumes of his History and all else that he had to
write during those years.
The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in
this part of my childhood, was arithmetic : this also my father
taught me: it was the task of the evenings, and I well re-
member its disagreeableness. But the lessons were only a part
of the daily instruction I received. Much of it consisted in
the books I read by myself, and my father's discourses to me,
chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813
we were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic
neighbourhood. My father 's health required considerable and
constant exercise, and he walked habitually before break-
fast, generally in the green lanes towards Hornsey. In these
walks I always accompanied him, and with my earliest recol-
lections of green fields and wild flowers, is mingled that of
the account I gave him daily of what I had read the day
before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary
rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of
paper while reading, and from these in the morning walks,
I told the story to him; for the books were chiefly histories,
of which I read in this manner a great number: Robertson's
histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest delight, then and
for long afterwards, was Watson's Philip the Second and
Third. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against
the Turks, and of the revolted Provinces of the Netherlands
against Spain, excited in me an intense and lasting interest.
Next to "Watson, my favourite historical reading was Hooke 's
History of Rome. Of Greece I had seen at that time no regu-
lar history, except school abridgments and the last two or
three volumes of a translation of Rollin's Ancient History,
ACCORDING TO JOHN STUART MILL 137
beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great
delight Langhorne's translation of Plutarch. In English
history, beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I re-
member reading Burnet's History of his Own Time, though
I cared little for anything in it except the wars and battles;
and the historical part of the "Annual Register," from the
beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my father bor-
rowed for me from Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a lively in-
terest in Frederic of Prussia during his difficulties, and in
Paoli, the Corsican patriot ; but when I came to the American
war, I took my part, like a child as I was (until set right
by my father) on the wrong side, because it was called the
English side. In these frequent talks about the books I read,
he used, as opportunity offered, to give me explanations and
ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental
cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to
him in my own words. He also made me read, and give him
a verbal account of, many books which would not have inter-
ested me sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself:
among others, Millar's Historical View of the English Gov-
ernment, a book of great merit for its time, and which he
highly valued; Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, McCrie's
Life of John Knox, and even Sewell and Rutty 's Histories
of the Quakers. He was fond of putting into my hands books
which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual cir-
cumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming
them: of such works I remember Beaver's African Memo-
randa, and Collin's Account of the First Settlement of New
South Wales. Two books which I never wearied of reading
were Anson's Voyages, so delightful to most young persons,
and a collection ( Hawkesworth 's, I believe) of Voyages
round the World, in four volumes, beginning with Drake
138 EDUCATION
and ending with Cook and Bougainville. Of children's books,
any more than of playthings, I had scarcely any, except an
occasional gift from a relation or acquaintance : among those
I had, Robinson Crusoe was preeminent, and continued to
delight me through all my boyhood. It was no part, however,
of my father's system to exclude books of amusement, though
he allowed them very sparingly. Of such books he possessed
at that time next to none, but he borrowed several for me;
those which I remember are the Arabian Nights, Cazotte's
Arabian Tales, Don Quixote, Miss Edgeworth 's Popular Tales,
and a book of some reputation in its day, Brooke's Fool of
Quality.
In my eighth year I commenced learning Latin, in con-
junction with a younger sister, to whom I taught it as I
went on, and who afterwards repeated the lessons to my
father: and from this time, other sisters and brothers being
successively added as pupils, a considerable part of my day's
work consisted of this preparatory teaching. It was a part
which I greatly disliked ; the more so as I was held responsible
for the lessons of my pupils, in almost as full a sense as for
my own: I, however, derived from this discipline the great
advantage, of learning more thoroughly and retaining more
lastingly the things which I was set to teach : perhaps, too, the
practice it afforded in explaining difficulties to others, may
even at that age have been useful. In other respects, the
experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the plan of
teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, I
am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that
the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral
discipline to either. I went in this manner through the
Latin grammar, and a considerable part of Cornelius Nepos
ACCORDING TO JOHN STUART MILL 139
and Caesar's Commentaries, but afterwards added to the su-
perintendence of these lessons, much longer ones of my own.
In the same year in which I began Latin, I made ray first
commencement in the Greek poets with the Iliad. After I
had made some progress in this, my father put Pope's transla-
tion into my hands. It was the first English verse I had cared
to read, and it became one of the books in which for many
years I most delighted : I think I must have read it from
twenty to thirty times through. I should not have thought
it worth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to
boyhood, if I had not, as I think, observed that the keen en-
joyment of this brilliant specimen of narrative and versifica-
tion is not so universal with boys, as I should have expected
both a priori and from my individual experience. Soon after
this time I commenced Euclid, and somewhat later, Algebra,
still under my father's tuition.
From my eighth to my twelfth year, the Latin books which
I remember reading were, the Bucolics of Virgil, and the first
six books of the ^Eneid; all Horace, except the Epodes; the
Fables of Phtedrus ; the first five books of Livy (to which from
my love of the subject I voluntarily added, in my hours of
leisure, the remainder of the first decade) ; all Sallust; a con-
siderable part of Ovid's Metamorphoses; some plays of Ter-
ence ; two or three books of Lucretius ; several of the Orations
of Cicero, and of his writings on oratory; also his letters to
Atticus, my father taking the trouble to translate to me from
the French the historical explanations in MLngault's notes.
In Greek I read the Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two
plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by
these I profited little; all Thucydides; the Hellenics of
Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes, ^Eschines, and
Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a
140 EDUCATION
little of Dionysius ; several books of Polybius ; and lastly Aris-
totle 's Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly scientific treatise
on any moral or psychological subject which I had read, and
containing many of the best observations of the ancients on
human nature and life, my father made me study with pecu-
liar care, and throw the matter of it into synoptic tables.
During the same years I learnt elementary geometry and
algebra thoroughly, the differential calculus, and other por-
tions of the higher mathematics far from thoroughly : for my
father, not having kept up this part of his early acquired
knowledge, could not spare time to qualify himself for remov-
ing my difficulties, and left me to deal with them, with little
other aid than that of books: while I was continually incur-
ring his displeasure by my inability to solve difficult prob-
lems for which he did not see that I had not the necessary
previous knowledge. 6
Such were the beginnings of the education of one
of the ablest intellects. The experience is quite
as pregnant in lessons concerning the worth of
individuality of teaching as concerning the native
ability and moral earnestness of the student. Given
such teachers as James Mill, such students as John
Stuart Mill would more frequently be made.
Happy such students ; happy such teachers !
Regarding certain elements of his educative
process Mr. Mill also expressed his valuation.
6 Autobiography, pp. 5 ff.
ACCORDING TO JOHN STUART MILL 141
In the autobiography he says:
My own consciousness and experience ultimately led me to
appreciate quite as highly as he did, the value of an early
practical familiarity with the school logic. I know of noth-
ing, in my education, to which I think myself more indebted
for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained. The first
intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency,
was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the
fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort I
attained, was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exer-
cise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father,
yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits
acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments
of this drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern
education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact
thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and propo-
sitions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous
terms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is noth-
ing to it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real
difficulties of correct ratiocination occur. It is also a study
peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philo-
sophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow proc-
ess of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable
thoughts of their own. They may become capable of dis-
entangling the intricacies of confused and self-contradictory
thought, before their own thinking faculties are much ad-
vanced ; a power which, for want of such discipline, many
otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they have to
answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as
they can command, to support the opposite conclusion,
scarcely even attempting to confute the reasonings of their
142 EDUCATION
antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the ques-
tion, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced one. 7
But in a more formal way he also remarks :
We are far from asserting that the dialectic contests of
the Greeks, or the public disputations of the Middle Ages
which succeeded to them, had never any but a beneficial effect ;
that they had not their snares and their temptations, and that
the good they effected might not be still better attained by