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Page 48
If thou be a gouernour, or haste ouer other soueraygntie, knowe
thy selfe. Knowe that the name of a soueraigne or ruler without
actuall gouernaunce is but a shadowe, that gouernaunce standeth
nat by wordes onely, but principally by acte and example; that by
example of gouernours men do rise or falle in vertue or vice. Ye
shall knowe all way your selfe, if for affection or motion ye do
speke or do nothing unworthy the immortalitie and moste precious
nature of your soule....
In semblable maner the inferiour persone or subiecte aught to
consider, that all be it he in the substaunce of soule and body be
equall with his superior, yet for als moche as the powars and
qualities of the soule and body, with the disposition of reason,
be nat in euery man equall, therfore god ordayned a diuersitie or
pre-eminence in degrees to be amonge men for the necessary
derection and preseruation of them in conformitie of lyuinge....
Where all thynge is commune, there lacketh ordre; and where ordre
lacketh, there all thynge is odiouse and uncomly.
Such is the goal which the grave Sir Thomas pointed out to the noble youth
of his land at the beginning of England's greatness, and such, within the
bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal even until now which the two
universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training
prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is
antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration,
nevertheless, to speak of the _Boke Named the Governour_ as the very Magna
Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in
a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the
end that the student may behold, as it were in one sublime vision, the
whole scale of being in its range from the lowest to the highest under the
divine decree of order and subordination, without losing sight of the
immutable veracity at the heart of all variation, which "is only the
praise and surname of virtue." This was no new vision, nor has it ever
been quite forgotten. It was the whole meaning of religion to Hooker, from
whom it passed into all that is best and least ephemeral in the Anglican
Church. It was the basis, more modestly expressed, of Blackstone's
conception of the British Constitution and of liberty under law. It was
the kernel of Burke's theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the
sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of evolution as taught by
Darwin and Spencer, yet bows in reverence before the unnamed and
incommensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose within the unfolding
universe. It was the wisdom of that child of Stratford who, building
better than he knew, gave to our literature its deepest and most
persistent note. If anywhere Shakespeare seems to speak from his heart and
to utter his own philosophy, it is in the person of Ulysses in that
strange satire of life as "still wars and lechery" which forms the theme
of _Troilus and Cressida_. Twice in the course of the play Ulysses
moralizes on the causes of human evil. Once it is in an outburst against
the devastations of disorder:
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite.
And, in the same spirit, the second tirade of Ulysses is charged with
mockery at the vanity of the present and at man's usurpation of time as
the destroyer instead of the preserver of continuity:
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
To have made this vision of the higher imagination a true part of our
self-knowledge, in such fashion that the soul is purged of envy for what
is distinguished, and we feel ourselves fellows with the preserving,
rather than the destroying, forces of time, is to be raised into the
nobility of the intellect. To hold this knowledge in a mind trained to
fine efficiency and confirmed by faithful comradeship, is to take one's
place with the rightful governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow
or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in its
free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription. The more
its membership is enlarged, the greater is its power, and the more secure
are the privileges of each individual. Yet, if not exclusive, an academic
aristocracy must by its very nature be exceedingly jealous of any
levelling process which would shape education to the needs of the
intellectual proletariat, and so diminish its own ranks. It cannot admit
that, if education is once levelled downwards, the whole body of men will
of themselves gradually raise the level to the higher range; for its creed
declares that elevation must come from leadership rather than from
self-motion of the mass. It will therefore be opposed to any scheme of
studies which relaxes discipline or destroys intellectual solidarity. It
will look with suspicion on any system which turns out half-educated men
with the same diplomas as the fully educated, thinking that such methods
of slurring over differences are likely to do more harm by discouraging
the ambition to attain what is distinguished than good by spreading wide a
thin veneer of culture. In particular it will distrust the present huge
overgrowth of courses in government and sociology, which send men into the
world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to
the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of
the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity,
with no hold on the past, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and
opinions, to concentre their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to
preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable
doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the
"fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the
very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen spirit of equality, which
proceeds from envy in the baser sort of democracy. It will regard the
character of education and the disposition of the curriculum as a question
of supreme importance; for its motto is always, _abeunt studia in mores_.
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