Readers of the present day can hardly appreciate the novelty and boldness of this advice. It was in Locke's time universally believed that diseases, especially epidemics, could be guarded against by some preventive drugs. This notion was a very ancient one, coming down from times even anterior to the age of Galen. All the old books of medicine are full of such prescriptions, the most celebrated of which were Mithridatium^ bearing the name of the celebrated king of Pontus, and Theriacum (the modem treacle)^ the composition of which was ascribed to Andromachus, ph3rsician to the Emperor Nero. Such com- positions were supposed to be in the first place antidotes to poisons, then preservative or prophylactic against poison, and generally against all infections or diseases. Many sucn medicines under the name of ''Alexipharmaca" or "Diet drinks" were commonly taken, and in times of pestilence were strongly recommended for general use in the Official Regulations set forth by the Government with the advice of the College of Physicians. It is very likely that the occurrence of Plague in London in 1665 had again brought these drugs into vogue, and given a fresh stimulus to their consumption which had lasted till Locke's time.
It need hardly be said that Locke's advice is most reasonable and '* sacredly to be observed," as there is no reason to believe (modem quackery notwithstanding) that any drug has any prophylactic power against diseases, (j. F. P.)
The leaves of the Red Poppy are as nearly as possible inert medicinally, and are admitted into the modern European pharmacopeias chiefly as a colouring matter. "Surfeit waters" were given by the old physicians against the vague and inscrutable complaint known as a surfeit. But what they meant by this a modem physician finds it extremely difficult to divine, (j. F. P.)
I 39, p. 10, 1. 18. " A^/ to be too forward in making use of Physick and Physicians.** In this advice Locke is certain to have the concurrence of those who have *' spent some time in the study of Physick" if, at least, they have spent their time to any purpose. A physician of the present day, Dr Chambers, remarks that a family medidne-chest may be an ex- cellent thing, but it should be placed in the store-room of the house, where it cannot be got at without some trouble, (j. F. P.)
We see in Locke's correspondence with the brothers Molyneux (one of them a doctor himself) how free the philosopher was from the com- mon errors of the physicians of his time. To Dr Molyneux he writes that physicians lay the foundation of their system '*on their own fancies and then endeavour to suit the phenomena of diseases and the cure of them to those fancies'* (L. to Dr M. 20 Ja. 169I). Some years later (15 June, 1697) he writes to W. Molyneux, "You cannot imagine how far a little observation carefully made by a man not tied up to the four humours, or sal, sulphur and mercury, or to acid and alcali which has of late prevailed, will carry a man in the curing of diseases though very stubborn and dangerous; and that with very little and common things and almost no medicine at all,** We find then that in Locke's summary there is but one point which has to be corrected, namely that about keeping children's feet wet. (j. F. P.)
Locke seems quoting Montaigne from memory. In the Chap. De la Coustume (the 32nd), Montaigne gives the conversation ** Platan tansa un enfant qui jouoit aux noix. II luy respondit: * Tu me tanses de peu de chose.' * L'accoustumance,' repliqua Platon, 'n'est pas chose de peu.'" Coste says that the original au- thority Diogenes Laertius makes Plato reprove a man for pkying at dice. That Locke was thinking of Montaigne's Essay is almost certain from his following it in next section. (See following note.)
Here Locke is following up the train of thought suggested by Montaigne. After the anecdote of Plato (which Locke gives to Solon) quoted in preceding note, Montaigne goes on: "I find that our greatest vices derive their fust propensity Irom our most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in the w^orld, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit when they hear a son miscall or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey that dares not reply nor turn again; and a great sign of wit when they see him cheat and overreach his play-fellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason; they bud and put out there, and after- wards shoot up vigorously and grow to prodigious bulk cultivated by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile inolinations upon the tenderness of their age and the triviality of the subject: first, it is Nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor de- pend upon the difference betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in crowns siace he does it in pins? than as they do who say, they only play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money. Children should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be represented to them, that they may not onl^ avoid thei0 in their actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the very thought should be hateful to them with what mark soever they may be disguised." (Book I. Chap. 22, " 0/ Custom:* Hazhtt*s Ed. L pp. 115 ff.)
The meaning is: Grown people say to children, ** Give me a blow and 111 pass it on to So-and-so.
Lady Masham says: "From Mr Locke I have often heard of his father that he was a man of parts. Mr L. never mentioned him but vdth great respect and affection. His father used a conduct towards him when young that he often spoke of afterwards with great approba- tion. It was the being severe to him by keeping him much in awe and at a distance when he was a boy; but relaxing, still by degrees, of that severity as he grew up to be a man, till, he being become capable of it, he lived perfectly with him as a firiend. And I remember he has told me that his father, after he was a man, solemnly asked his pardon for having struck him once in a passion when he was a boy.*' (F. B.i. 13.)
Texts of different editions shew variations here. The first edition has: "it is often by bringing." This Locke probably wrote, but it makes an awkward sentence.
I do not understand Locke to assert that nothing weighs with **a rational creature" but considerations of personal loss and gain.
The meaning is, I take it, as follows: A rational creature is influenced not by passions, or by likes and dislikes, but by a calculation of what will produce good and evil either to himself or others. The good or evil following from certain actions is the reward or punishment of those actions. In this sense Locke seems to say that reward and punishment are the onl^ motives to a rational creature; yet even a rational aneatuie may sometimes act from feeling without calculation. Deeds as well as words may come straight "out of the abundance of the heart" The influence of JuM too is much dwelt upon by Locke himself. Locke's worship of reason led him to over-estimate the influence of reflection and calculation; and in this section he attributes to " ail mankind " a con- stant eye to the future, though most people are for by fax the greater portion of their lives dominated entirely by the present.
§ ffit P- 549!• S^ *' ^^ *^^ children a love of credit,., the great secret of education, " In this Locke is at one with the Jesuits; but I know of no other authoritv who would make the great secret of education lie in what we may call Grundyism, In § 6i LociA admits that Reputation is not the true principle and measure of virtue, but says that it comes nearest to the true principle. But why make so much of anjrthing short of the true? The desire of reputation considered as a force is subject to great variations both in strengtn and direction. In strength it varies not only with individual character, but also with the time of life. A man who when young was so desirous of reputation that he would almost have thrown himself down Etna to gain it, past middle age will hardly consider this a strong enough motive for walking up. Again, the directum of the force depends entirely on the notions of the people whom we want to please. Love of reputation acts auite as strongly in making youths like Charley Bates and the Dodger wish to pick pockets well, as it acts in making candidates for Balliol Scholarships wish to do good Latin and Greek composition. The/e seems some danger of increasing this force as LocKe would increase it, when we cannot be sure of the direction in which it would act. In these days it is quite as likely to turn a young gentleman into a half-professional athlete as into a useful member of society.
The influence of reputation seems to have been much in Locke's thoughts, and he does not underrate the variety in the eflects produced b^it. The following occurs in his diary: **Dec. lath, 1678. The prin- cipal spring from which the actions of men take their rise, the rule they conduct them by, and the end to which they direct them, seems to be credit and reputation, and that which they at any rate avoid is in the greatest part shame and disgrace. This makes the Hurons and other people of Canada with such constancy endure inexpressible torments. This makes merchants in one country and soldiers in another. This puts men upon school divinity in one country, and physics and mathe- matics in another. This cuts out the dresses for the women, and makes the fashions for the men; and makes them endure fhe inconveniences of all. This makes men drunkahls and sober, thieves and honest; and thieves themselves trae to one another. Religions are upheld hy this, and factions maintained; and the shame of being disesteemed by those with whom one hath lived, and to whom one would recommend oneself, is the great source and director of most of the actions of men. Where riches are in credit, knavery and injustice that produce them are not out of countenance, because the state being got, esteem follows it; as is some countries the crovm ennobles tlie blood. Where power and not the good exercise of it gives reputation, all the injustice, falsehood, violence and oppression that attains that, goes for wisdom and ability. Where love of one's country is the thing in credit, there we shall see a race of brave Romans; and when being a favourite at court was the only thing in fashion, one may observe the same race of Romans all turned flatterers and informers. He therefore that would govern the world well had need consider rather what fashions he makes than what laws; and to bring anything into use he need only give it reputa- tion."
Locke in this section approaches the truth which is much dwelt on by later writers on education, that education gives nothing, but only exercises and trains inborn capacities. Locke sees that *' those who are about children should well study their natures and aptitudes,'' but this is mainly with the view of ascertaining individual peculiarities. With him it is not a general law, but merely a yielding to special weaknesses " in many cases, that " all that we can do or should aim at is to midce the best of what Nature has given." Here he is immeasurably behind Rousseau who demands that Sie science of education should be based on the study of the common nature of children.
§ 67, p. 44) 1. 13* ** To hare and rate themJ* To hare is to urge or set on by threats or blows.
Locke considers it a waste of time to ouote authorities in matters where our own reason may decide. {0/ Study,) He is therefore sparing in notes; indeed this is the only note in the Thoughts, Coste has con- sulted Suetonius and Plutarch. The first tells us that Augustus himself taught his grandson to write. Plutarch in his life of Cato the Censor gives an account of the care which Cato took of his son even as an mfant He would neglect anything except public affairs to wait on the child and wash him and plav with him. Later on he himself taught the child his letters although he had a slave who was a good instructor. But he did not wish his son to be beholden to a slave for his learning or to be corrected by a slave when he neglected his lessons. He after- wards taught him the laws and instructed him in ail martial exercises and in swimming. He even wrote in a lars;e hand the lives of great men that the boy might imitate their examples. And he was as careful in his language before the boy as he would have been with a Vestal Virgin.
It is quite true that the masten in public schools do not attempt to teach manners, at least directly, but tne schools seem to teadi manners if not the schoolmasters. "Boys who learn nothing else at our public schools," says Thackeray, *' learn at least good manners, or what we consider to be such." {Newcomes, Cluip. xxi. adin.)\ and I suppose nobody would seriously maintain that public-schoolmen as a cla^ are inferior in ** breeding to their social equals who have been brought up at home or in private schools. This appeal to results seems to me decisive against Locke's <t priori reasoning.
§ 70, p* 47, 1* 39. " Strip him of that he has got firom his companions or give him up to ruin** Fear of moral corruption led a much less strict moralist than Locke, vw. Lord Chesterfield, to desire that his successor in the title might be brought up by a tutor. "This person," he writes, "should be desired to teach him his religious and moral obligations, which are never heard of nor thought of at a public school, where even Cicero's Offices are never read, but where all the lewdness of Horace, Juvenal and Martial is their whole study, and as soon as they are able their practice." (Chesterfield's Letters about education of his successor, p. 38). Thus both Locke and Chesterfield seem to think that a bo^ could not live a virtuous life at a public school; but there is, thank God, no reason for such a belief now. So if we apply Locke's argument to the present state of things it breaks down. This is his argument: the chief thing a boy gains in a public school is ' sturdiness and the power of standing on his own legs. What is the use of this sturdiness? Why, that it may be a saf^;uard to his virtue. But if he goes to a public school he will gain the sturdiness at the cost of his virtue, the very thing it should {>rotect. The reply to this is simple. A boy does not, in these da3rs at east, necessarily become vicious in a public school. He will no doubt be subjected to some temptations that he would have escaped at home; but he will always find a number of well-disposed boys ready to aid him in keeping the right path. And the mind, like the body, may suffer from too much '* cockering and tenderness." It is strange that Locke who sees that rules and precepts are of little use, who teaches that habit is everything, and that the chief force in forming habit is the company we keep, nevertheless desires to bring up a youth in such seclusion that he would be quite unprepared for the company of equals, and would have formed no habits suitable for such company when he was suddenly introduced into it As I have elsewhere said, Locke's notion of teaching knowledge of the world by means of an experienced tutor, is like pre- paring a man to steer a vessel by getting a pilot to give him lessons on shore. "Nobody is made anything by hearing of mles or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extempore by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting as a coherent thinker or a strict reasoner l^ a set of rules shewing him wherein right reasoning consists." {Cof u,^^,) Is not the art of temperate and judicious living among our equals to be learnt by practice like the art of right reasoning? (Cf. supra^ p. 74, Locke's righteous soul was so vexed by the depravity which reigned after the Restoration that he formed many plans for migrating to the New World. It is interesting to find that he looked to education for the remedy as the philosopher Fichte did in the dark days of Germany.
§ 70, p« 50, 1. II. *^ Some late actions at Sea."
** These words were written," says Coste, "during the war which ended in the Peace of Ryswick, 1697." Only the first short paragraph of this important section appears in the first edition (1693), so the above passage must have been written about 1695. Perhaps our defeat at Beachey Head was in Locke's mind. The truth of what he says was home out a few years later when two captains left Benbow to fight the French by himself, and were afterwards tried by court-martial and shot for doing so.
parts and breeding."
This is in accordance with the mediaeval practice in the bringing up of gentlemen. The boys served an apprenticeship to life as pages in the household of some nobleman. Now-a-days were it not for the long holidays (of which parents are constantly complaining) youths would seldom speak with any grown persons but schoolmasters, servants and tradesmen. Hence the amount of thought and conversation devoted to school subjects, especially the games, is out of all proportion to the import- ance of those subjects. See an excellent article by Mr Edward Lyttelton on " Athletics in Public Schools " (The Nineteenth Century for January, § 73»?• 52» '• ^7' ^* None of the things they are to learn shotdd ever be...imposed on them as a task."
Schoolmasters are inclined to laugh when they first read Locke's suggestions about giving boys *'a liking and inclination to what you propose to them to be learned." He seems to think that one employ- ment is in itself as pleasant as another, and that it is the restraint only which sets children against their lessons. But though things are often made distasteful by unnecessary and over-long restraint, and by bad teaching, there is a difference in the things themselves, as the learners soon discover. Some lessons are populajr, some unpopular; some are liked or disliked by some boys; others by other boys. So there is no denying that all lessons cannot be made equally attractive. When this is admitted it will further be seen that the most attractive lesson cannot be made as agreeable as the most attractive game, or even, to some boys at any rate, as the least attractive game. A boy who is good at history may find pleasure in the history lesson; bat for all that he would probably sooner be in the open air playing fives or cricket. The notion then that the work may be made so pleasant that no compulsion will be required seems to me (to use a modem cant phrase) ''out of the sphere of practical didactics.** But I would by no means infer from this, as some schoolmasters are inclined to, that the teacher is mainly a driver. I doubt very much whether the mind (the mind of a young person at all events) can work with any profit when it takes no interest and finds no pleasure in the subject. After many years' experience I am even inclined to agree with Locke (against Arnold by the way) that boys as a body are not idle, and that they are "never sparing of their pains '* (§ 74, p. 54) if the work be suitable to their abilities. If the work is distasteful and the boys seem idle the teacher should seek the cause of this in a mistaken choice of subject for those pupils, or in his method of dealing with the subject. The great thing to secure in the end is, as Locke says, that " the mind should get an habitual mastery over itself,** and be able to '"betake itself to new and less acceptable employments without reluctance and discomposure*' (§ 75t P* 54» 1* 3^) \ ^u^ ^^is ^^^^ ^o^ come of dreary hours spent in simulated attention and real intellectual apathy.
% 78, p. 56, 1. 41. " There is hit one fault for which children should be beaten.'*^ Locke in his eagerness to do away with the too ready use of blows, has invented a limitation which proves much narrower than it seems to be. I have heard of a country where there was no imprisonment for debt, but where many people were in confinement for contumacious re- fusal to pay. Similarly it turns out that Xx>cke's rule only protects a child from blows for a first offence. If he tells a lie a second time, or even if he goes on in a course of idleness after due warning,* the offence becomes disobedience, obstinacy, or rebellion, and is visited with the rod.
J. Warton records a saying of Locke's friend the first Lord Shaftes- bury: " That wisdom lay in the heart, not in the head; and that it was not the want of knowledge but the perverseness of the will that filled men's actions with folly and their lives with disorder." (Note to Absalon and AchitopheL) Locke however always prefers appealing to the head. How far this can be done with young people is a very interesting question. Locke shrewdly observes that they are pleased by being treated as rational creatures. This is true enough, for they soon like the respect which they seldom get, but which they see shewn to those who are older. But in reasoning with children it is verv difficult to be quite honest with them. They cannot understand tne whole matter, and the grown person is tempted to give as the reason that which is only in part the reason or perhaps not the real reason at all. Flattered by the appeal children, and youths even, allow very readily anything that is put before them, and are convinced upon authority if I may use such a seeming contradiction. Still, nothing can be more unwise than to treat children like sheep and never even try to under- stand what their view may be. That they will ** reason" with or without a guide is absolutely certain; so where we can we had better take their minds with us.
In the case of boys, a master cannot consider too carefully the public opinion he has to deal with, and only in very exceptional circumstances should he go counter to it Montaigne gives even children credit for power of reflecting and would teach them "philosophy." "6^» enfant en est capable au partir de la nourrisse, beaucoup mieux que d*apprendre d lire ou escrtre. La pkilosophie a des discours pour la naissance des hommes comme pour la decrepitude. A child when he leaves his nurse is better fitted for philosophy than for learning to read and write. Philosophy has teaching for the dawn of life as well as for its close." {Essais, Bk. I.
§ 83, p. 62, 1. ao. "The smart should come immediately from another's hand:' The plan here recommended is that of the Jesuits. Aecording to their rules corporal punishment is inflicted by a corrector who is not a Jesuit. But as a Roman Catholic writer, L. Kellner (in his Ersie- httngS'geschichte\ has well said, the employment of an executioner changes the nature of the punishment, and gives it a judicial rather than a parental character. The object of the punishment being solely the child's good it should be inflicted by the parent or the person standing in loco parentis. The notion that the child will think of the inflicter as the cause of the pain is as little reasonable as that he will try to be revenged on the stick or the birch.
§ 90, p. (i^^ 1. 40. ** Children should from their first beginning to talk have some discreet y sober ^ nay wise person about them.'* In Locke's directions about the tutor he might have quoted Mon- taigne, who advises that a man should be chosen with a good head rather than a full one {plustost la teste bien faicte que bien pleine). But Locke is more exigeant in this matter than Montaigne; and his notion that a tutor is no more to be changed than a wife is peculiarly his own* Although Locke seems much under the influence of Montaigne (see Introduction p. 1) he refers to him here only and that by mistake as according to Coste who edited the Essays no such anecdote occurs in them. Montaigne (1533 — 1592) preceded Locke by 99 years. The a4th and 25th Essays of the First Book {Of Pedantry and Of the Edu- cation of Children) have become classical in education. They have been translated and published for students of education, with portions of bk. III. chaps. 8, 12, 13 which bear on the same subject; but the translation is German not English.
Sebastian Castalio, whose Latin translation of the Bible became very celebrated, was bom in Danphiny or Savoy, in 151 5 and died at Basel in 15631 in extreme poverty.
Edward Panton in his Speculum Juventutis (London 1671) recom- mends education by a "Governor" much as Locke does, e.g. on p. no he says "You will tell me it is a shame to have a Governor at 10 years old...Whence will you have a young man extract the maxims of his Government? Shall he take it from experience? He has it not. Shall he receive it from his inclination? for one good he has a thousand ill. Shall he have it from his own clear ingenuity? It is that Rock where most suffer shipwrack...Will you have him draw it from reading and observing of history? Thence he may possibly get his best assistance, Books, like Maps may direct him wnich way to sayl, but a good Governor mu^t be his best pilot to conduct him to his port of happiness."
Lady Masham tells us: " If there was anything that Mr Locke could not sort him to or be in easy conversation with, it vras ill-breeding Civility he thought not only the great ornament of life, and that that gave lustre and gloss to all our actions, but looked upon it as a Christian duty that deserved to be more inculcated as such than it generally was."
S 94> P- 75»!• 1* ** Latin and learning make all the noised Dr Johnson, as Boswell tells us, found fault with Locke*s book as one-sided because it attached so little importance to literature. In this Locke followed Montaigne as a spokesman of the party who were dis- contented with the system of the Renascence. Montaigne admitted that Greek or Latin were great ornaments, *'but,** said he, '*we buy them too dear." If the young gentleman is observed to shew an indis- creet application to the study of books this must be discouraged, as it renders him unfit for society and turns him from ''better occupations."
Coste says these were the authors of treatises on Logic and Meta- physics after the manner of the Schoolmen, and Locke names them because they were in vogue at Oxford in his day.
This reproof of ''didactic teaching" is much less pointed than the passage in Montaigne beginning " 'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's ears, as if they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the teacher has said." (Essays j Bk. i. ch. 35.) It seems strange that Locke says so little about teaching, but the truth is that if we under- stand by teaching communicating knowledge, Locke attached small importance to it. Knowledge he held to be tA^ internal perception of the mind, (Locke to StillingHeet, F. B. ii. 433.) "Knowing is seeing; and if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves we do so by another man's eyes, let him use ever so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author as much as we will." (C. 0/1/,% 24.) So the tutor's business is to train the mental vision and to cultivate the desire of seeing. *' We should always remember that the faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to us just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other manual operation dexterously and with ease; let him have ever so much vigour and activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashioning and forming his hand or outward parts to these motions. Just so it is in the mind. (Cof U. § 6.) From this it follows that "the business of education is not as I think to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as mav best piake them capable of any when they shall apply them- selves to it,^^ Their studies should be various, but the end proposed should be "an increase of the powers and activity of the mind, not an enlargement of its possessions." {C. of U, % ig ad f) These important passages give us a much clearer notion of Locke's scheme of intellectual education than we can get from the Thoughts alone. In the TJioughts physical and moral education seem to throw intellectual education into the shade. This comes from Locke's tendency to think mainly, if not exclusively, of one power in the mind, the reasoning power, "the candle of Uie Lord set up by Himself in men's minds," as he calls it (F. B. ii. 129); and as this faculty cannot be highly developed in child- hood, and as the imagination, then so strong, should according to Locke be rather repressed than cherished, he in effect puts off intellectual education till the young man can be his own teacher. However, he recommends that the reasoning power should be cultivated as far as possible, and should receive the greatest care and attention. (Supra^ "Things which human nature would grieve lor were they denied to it." (Hor. Sat i. i.)
children*^ Curiosity is another name for taking interest, and the minds of the youne: work only when their interest is awakened. Stolidity is always marked by absence of curiosity. I have known some children of highly developed stupidity show no curiosity when.taken for the first time to the Brighton Aquarium. Captain Colomb tells us of some tribes in Africa who are neither excited nor interested when they first see a rail- way train. But children's curiosity is hardly continuous enough to be turned to account for instruction, and their questions often show rather that the thing named has caught their eye than that they want to know about it. Professor Bain would even attribute much of such questioning to *' egotism'* and "the delight in giving trouble" (Education as a Science^ p. 90). Locke takes up the subject again in § 118, p. 103; and there he well 8a3rs that we should observe what the child's mind aims at in the question. Surely the thing aimed at will rarely indeed be found to be "giving trouble."
§ no, p. 89, L 33. ^^ Taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality:*