Philosophy. CAN HIGH EDUCATION COUNTERACT THE EAGER. NESS OF THE SENSES? AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-III. WHEN I read the announcement of this debate as one belonging to the department of philosophy, I had no difficulty in my own mind in attaching a meaning to its terms, and I think the difficulty of understanding it, noted on the part of both openers of the discussion and by H. Scott, arises, not from the ambiguity of the term, but inattention to the fact that this is a metaphysical question in connection with intellectual and moral philosophy. Certain opinions have always been held by philosophers on the moral effects of education, and these have been by the adherents to a certain form of religious creed almost as strenuously and universally denied, and the question seems to me to suggest in strict philosophical language that old debatable topic, "Do morals and civilization proceed pari passu with education? or, Can wisdom's bless'd control Banish all vice, all error from the soul? It is a trite saying that education makes the man, that habit is second nature, and that if we wish to have good children we must train them well. Pope has said, ""Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined;" and a saying something similar has been attributed to the great Roman satirist, Juvenal; in speaking of the training, example, and correction of children, he observes that, whether they turn out good or bad, ""Twill all depend upon thy forming care: Just as the shoot is pruned, the tree will bear." Here, then, is a distinctly prevalent idea, common enough in the minds of many, that if men are educated, they will acquire a mastery over their passions and appetites, cease to love the gratifications of the senses, and learn to derive pleasure from the contemplation of goodness and the practice of holiness, will even learn to consider abstinence a delight and continence a joy. Here is a passage in which the topic is discussed in this point of view. It is taken from "Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind," by the late Professor Thomas Brown, one of the most profound thinkers who has occupied the chair of Morals in the University of Edinburgh : "In the lowest ranks of life, at least in far the greatest part of civilized Europe, it means nothing more than the training of the hands to a certain species of motion, which forms one of the subdivisions of mechanical industry. In the higher ranks it implies, in like manner, a certain training of the limbs to a series of motions, which are, however, not motions of mere utility, like those of the artisan, but of grace; and in addition to those bodily movements, a training of the mind to a due command of certain graceful forms of expression, to which, in a few happier cases, is added the knowledge, more or less extensive and accurate, of the most striking truths of science. When all this is performed, education is thought to be complete; to express this completion by the strongest possible word, the individual is said to be accomplished; and if graceful motions of the limbs, and motions of the tongue in well-turned phrases of courteous elegance, and a knowledge of some of the brilliant expressions of poets and wits and orators of different countries, and of a certain number of the qualities of the masses of the atoms which surround him, were sufficient to render man what God intended him to be, the parent who had taken every necessary care for adorning his child with these bodily and mental graces might truly exult in the consciousness that he had done his part to the generation which was to succeed, by accomplishing at least one individual for the noble duties which he had to perform in it. But if the duties which man has to perform, whatever ornament they may receive from the corporeal and intellectual graces that may flow around them, employ the operation of principles of action of a very different kind; if it is in the heart that we are to seek the source of the feelings which are our noblest distinction, with which we are what even God may almost approve, and without which we are worthy of the con demnation even of beings frail and guilty as ourselves; and if the heart require to be protected from vice with far more care than the understanding itself, fallible as it is, to be protected from error, can he indeed lay claim to the praise of having discharged the parental office of education, who has left the heart to its own passions, while he has contented himself with furnishing to those passions the means of being more extensively baneful to the world than, with less accomplished selfishness, they could have been? In what they term education, they have never once thought that the virtues were to be included as objects; and they would truly feel something very like astonishment if they were told that the first and most essential part of the process of educating the moral being whom heaven had consigned to their charge was yet to be begun in the abandonment of their own vices and the purification of their own heart by better feelings than those which had corrupted it; without which primary selfamendment, the very authority that is implied in the noble office which they were to exercise might be a source not of good but of evil to him who was unfortunately born to be its subject." [In the Lectures there follows here a passage from the Satires of Juvenal, in Latin, and of these we present the sense in Hodgson's Version, XIV., 50-60.] "So Nature rules, and vices quicker come When foul corruption first begins at home; Some nobler youths the base example scorn, In the same path with grovelling manners tread." There is a large party in the State, too, who have doubts of the efficacy of education. They grudge to hear of the toiling millions being educated-or at least strive to keep their education down to a minimum, in case they, being over-educated, should be raised above their station, and be led to become too clever by half-more vicious, more vile, and more dangerous. Here is a fair opening for a debate without ambiguity, and one or two remarks may be allowed us on the topic as thus presented. This view of the effects and the effectiveness of education shows that it is quite a debateable philosophical question, and one, too, of very great importance. The manner of stating the subject brings out very clearly the nature of the point in dispute to be, Does education civilize man? I remark, in the first place, that education multiplies a man's enjoyments, and so emancipates him from total dependence on the senses for delight. Secondly, it opens up to his view, and brings within his reach, enjoyments of a higher, a nobler, and a more ennobling sort than the senses can yield, and so disinclines him to rest in and be contented with the gratifications of the senses. Thirdly, it supplies a loftier ideal of life, and makes that ideal more imperatively to be striven after than the pleasures of the senses. Fourthly, it encourages and increases self-control, and that preserves men from becoming slaves to their senses and the joys they afford. Fifthly, it brings before the mind the example of the great, the noble, and the good of former ages, and stirs the spirit with an ambition to become like them: it excites the mind to a comprehension of the great delights which the experience of the noble makes certain, and so overpowers the cravings of sense by the desire of fame. "Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise, To scorn delights and live laborious days." There can be no doubt, therefore, that education has a civilizing effect on man; and this opinion, which theory suggests as probable, history amply substantiates. It is the idler and the inane that become the stupid votaries of sense and sensualism, and not the man whose whole nature has been trained to work, think, plan, practise, and perform. A. B. C. NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-III. HIGH education is a very indefinite term. It may signify a great many different things to a great many different minds. Every man forms his own ideal of education. If education means a complete and thorough training and development of the pecularities, powers, passions, and propensities of his nature,-bodily, mental, and moral, then the eagerness of the senses must be cultured along with the other properties of a man, and in so far the powers and capacities of the senses must be augmented and increased, and the delights they afford in their use must be more intense and gratifying. The eye of the painter is quickened by use and culture, and he finds a far higher degree of joy in the sight of beauty of form, colour, or scene, than any ordinary onlooker would do. The ear of the musician is refined and intensified by practice and culture, till he can detect and feel far more minute and exquisite harmonies and dissonances than the common rank and file of those who hear so many of the sweet melodies of the earth as though they heard them not. Even the sense of touch can be so trained that a perfect enchantment and entrancement of tactual delight may be experienced by those who have given themselves this sybaritic education. The sense of smell may be so heightened in its power that it can make far nicer distinctions than are usually made. I may refer to the statement made, I think, by Coleridge, that no fewer than seventynine scents, not all of them perfumes, are perceptible in the city of Cologne, so celebrated for its odorous eau. We know that men who take snuff, and men who habitually smoke tobacco, can become so critical and nice, that they can tell the various species of the weed from which the material is manufactured; and I have seen it stated somewhere that there were epicures in wine who could tell the vintage and the place of growth from the acuteness of their perception of the aroma peculiar to each special sort of grape, and each speciality of the year in which the vines were fermented. All these facts and statements go to prove that a high education does not counteract but cultivate the eagerness of the senses, does not blunt or stale their charm, but gives the added charm of connoisseurship to the ordinary and common sensations which they are calculated to afford, and imparts the greed of habit to the greed of sense. Anything that is educated gains greater skill, dexterity, habitual recurrency and attractiveness. The culture it gets imparts eagerness to the desire for exercising it. The eagerness of the dramdrinker's palate for a repetition of the stimulation for which it has cultured a desire is well known; the terrible commanding intensity which the smoker's favourite occupation exercises over him is thoroughly unmistakable as a proof of the statement made, that the eagerness of the senses is increased by culture, exercise, and habit. It is the same in all other forms of sensational or sensual delight. The playgoer is fascinated, the admirer of the ballet is but enchanted, and the sensualist is brought into a state of semi-despair or madness under the strong impetuosities of passion. These and a thousand other evidences crowd upon one when one endeavours to form any idea of the over-mastering power which the senses acquire over any one who has given himself up to the indulgence of the appetites and sensitive framework of the body; and we see in the waifs and strays of social life the sadly blighting effects of the power of sensualism over those who cannot apply self-denial to their sensuality. The foregoing argument refers to high culture bestowed upon the senses themselves, and has regard to the prac tices and habits acquired through the education of the senses; it holds also where the education is applied to the whole nature; for it is the direct tendency of education to quicken and to make more excitable, more active and more claimant for exercise or gratification. You cannot easily restrain an astronomer from stargazing, a botanist from being interested in flowers and plants, a geologist from observing strata and formations, and making guesses at the causes of the phenomena he perceives; so neither can you keep senses that are educated to seek the joys of sensation from desiring that sort of enjoyment, and devising means for the gratification of those desires. 66 But I find that the openers of the debate on this topic have taken a different reading of the question from that which I have taken, and I suppose it will be expected that I should follow their lead, and discuss the question from the point of view laid down by them in their papers, as they have, I suppose, the right to posit the question so as to suit themselves. B. L. B. asserts that "the senses are but the servants of the thinker;" implying, I suppose, that they are the masters of the non-thinker. But is every educated man a thinker? or is every thinker an educated man ว If educated man and thinker were convertible terms, perhaps there might be some truth in the phrase, which I confess sounds prettily and flatteringly. But while our friend refers to Newton, whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart" from sensationalism; he gives us no hint as to Bacon, whose fingers were "contaminated with base bribes; of Coleridge the opium-eater and winebibber; of De Quincey, almost as guilty of culturing sensational delirium; of numberless instances of great thinkers, like Porson, Shelley, Godwin, &c., being very much devoted to the pleasures of the senses. I am not sure that a different principle comes in here altogether, and that the loftier the intelligence the more signal the descent from thought to sense. The law of contrast which gives heightening to opposites, as in Goldsmith and Burns; in Thorwaldsen and in Byron; in Galileo and in Erasmus, has a very strong hold in morals; and it not unfrequently happens in connection with these things that the greatest relapse into passion and sense occurs just after the highest flights and the grandest aspirings, so Milton left his dreams of paradise to scold, and, if some tales be true, to chastise, his grown-up daughters. - |