|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 47
Such criticism does not imply that advanced work in any of the branches of
human knowledge should be curtailed; but it does demand that, as a
background to the professional pursuits, there should be a common
intellectual training through which all students should pass, acquiring
thus a single body of ideas and images in which they could always meet as
brother initiates.
We shall, then, make a long step forward when we determine that in the
college, as distinguished from the university, it is better to have the
great mass of men, whatever may be the waste in a few unmalleable minds,
go through the discipline of a single group of studies--with, of course, a
considerable freedom of choice in the outlying field. And it will probably
appear in experience that the only practicable group to select is the
classics, with the accompaniment of philosophy and the mathematical
sciences. Latin and Greek are, at least, as disciplinary as any other
subjects; and if it can be further shown that they possess a specific
power of correction for the more disintegrating tendencies of the age, it
ought to be clear that their value as instruments of education outweighs
the service of certain other studies which may seem to be more immediately
utilitarian.
For it will be pretty generally agreed that efficiency of the individual
scholar and unity of the scholarly class are, properly, only the means to
obtain the real end of education, which is social efficiency. The only
way, in fact, to make the discipline demanded by a severe curriculum and
the sacrifice of particular tastes required for unity seem worth the cost,
is to persuade men that the resulting form of education both meets a
present and serious need of society and promises to serve those
individuals who desire to obtain society's fairer honors. As for the
specific need of society at the present day, it is not my purpose to open
this matter now, for the good reason that the editor of THE UNPOPULAR
REVIEW has already permitted me to argue it at length in my article on
_Natural Aristocracy_. Mr. McCombs, speaking for the "practical" man,
declares that there is no place in politics for the intellectual
aristocrat. A good many of us believe that unless the very reverse of this
is true, unless the educated man can somehow, by virtue of his education,
make of himself a governor of the people in the larger sense, and even to
some extent in the narrow political sense, unless the college can produce
a hierarchy of character and intelligence which shall in due measure
perform the office of the discredited oligarchy of birth, we had better
make haste to divert our enormous collegiate endowments into more useful
channels.
And here I am glad to find confirmation of my belief in the stalwart old
_Boke Named the Governour_, published by Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531, the
first treatise on education in the English tongue, and still, after all
these years, one of the wisest. It is no waste of time to take account of
the theory held by the humanists when study at Oxford and Cambridge was
shaping itself for its long service in giving to the oligarchic government
of Great Britain whatever elements it possessed of true aristocracy.
Elyot's book is equally a treatise on the education of a gentleman, and on
the ordinance of government; for, as he says elsewhere, he wrote "to
instruct men in such virtues as shall be expedient for them which shall
have authority in a weal public." I quote from various parts of his work
with some abridgment, retaining the quaint spelling of the original, and I
beg the reader not to skip, however long the citation may appear:
Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally in al his
creatures, begynning at the moste inferiour or base, and
assendynge upwarde; so that in euery thyng is ordre, and without
ordre may be nothing stable or permanent; and it may nat be called
ordre, excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base,
accordynge to the merite or estimation of the thyng that is
ordred. And therfore hit appereth that god gyueth nat to euery man
like gyftes of grace, or of nature, but to some more, some lesse,
as it liketh his diuine maiestie. For as moche as understandyng is
the most excellent gyfte that man can receiue in his creation, it
is therfore congruent, and accordynge that as one excelleth an
other in that influence, as therby beinge next to the similitude
of his maker, so shulde the astate of his persone be auanced in
degree or place where understandynge may profite. Suche oughte to
be set in a more highe place than the residue where they may se
and also be sene; that by the beames of theyr excellent witte,
shewed throughe the glasse of auctorite, other of inferiour
understandynge may be directed to the way of vertue and commodious
liuynge....
Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after the vulgare opinion of
men, but is only the prayse and surname of vertue; whiche the
lenger it continueth in a name or lignage, the more is nobilitie
extolled and meruailed at....
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|