DEAN STANLEY ON EDUCATION IN AFTER-LIFE.
WE wish the Dean of Westminster would take an oppor- tunity some day to add a supplement to the very eloquent address which he delivered last Saturday at Bristol on " Educa- cation in After-life." It was an excellent address, a little discursive, perhaps, and overladen with pictorial effect, but still full of interest for any one who is competent to read it. The Dean scarcely omitted to mention one of the unconscious influ- ences through which men may be educated in after-life,—the reeding of great books, converse with keen intelligences, travel, the study of Art, and above all, the experience of life, which of all aids to education helps most, perhaps, to keep populations sane ; and on each be had a pleasant ray of sunlight, or some- times moonlight, to throw. He delighted his audience worthily, and helped incidentally to dissipate the delusion which he is always attacking, that a clergyman cannot be a human being, with the vivid ideas and lively perceptions and vigorous intellectual powers of other men ; but still his address wants a postscript, which we hope be will supply. He has told us all about the unconscious aids to education in after-life, but what is his opinion as to the best conscious aid, the wisest method of striving to acquire the instruction in which a grown man feels himself deficient? We are not talking of working-men just riovtr or even of self-made men, but of men who have had fair opportunities, and may even have used them, but want to "continue their education for themselves." Of the thousands of young men who come out of our Universities, Colleges, or High Schools, a considerable proportion, more than is sometimes fancied, fool themselves ignorant, and would correct
their ignorance, if only they knew how to set about the work. Some would like to know something of modern politics, of which they feel themselves as ignorant as little children. Others, who find, greatly to their surprise, that there are literatures in the world as valuable as those of Greece and Rome, would gladly put themselves to some trouble to acquire one or two modern lan- guages,— to master German, and turn into an effective instrument of work their smattering of French. A great many would heartily like to know something positive of science, or of one science such as electricity ; and more are tempted by intellectual hunger to acquaint themselves with modern literature. The. number of women in this position is incalculable, and that of men is very far from few. The new generation, we mean the men of twenty-five, have a good many faults—mental bonelessnese being perhaps the newest and the most visible—but their main fault certainly is neither self-conceit nor self-decep- tion. They are rather painfully aware of what they do not know, and disposed, many of them, in a half-languid, half- cynical way, to underrate their own acquiretnents. Suppose a young man of that sort inclined to learn in leisure hours, what is the best way to set about it? The answer is not quite so easy as people think, and is certainly not summed up in the one word,— " Read." If the thing desired is a knowledge of literature, reading, of course, is the true line ; but even then, the first necessity is to know what to read, and so avoid a waste of time and toil which, to men who can read, but are not omnivorous of books, is very serious. Nobody of authority ever answers that question. The careful reading in a couple of years of about a hundred volumes would give a young man a very fair idea of English modern literature, enough, at all events, to induce him to read more, and beget in him that habit of artistic reading which enables a practised hand to master a new book in a time which to the ordinary "reader," who wanta a " marker " and goes back con- stantly, seems physically impossible. But nobody offers such a list, and when it is extracted out of some competent friend, a hundred books are not so easy to get. The number of young men with ordinary allowances who think they may allow themselves a subscription to a solid library is much fewer than that of would-be students, and as all boys know, unless you have your books for yourself, study is hindered by a new and never-ending bother. Even then, some guidance is required, and some help, to prevent a wearisome waste of energy. The student, without trained help, is apt to study wastefully, to be conscious that he is travelling on, but travelling in a vacuum. Dean Stanley put this very well in his lecture, and with a care dictated by his consciousness that he was speaking in a city full of self-educating—we do not say self -ed ucated—y oung. men .—
" A. self-educated man was in some respects the bettor, in some respects the worse, for not having been trained during his early years in the regular routine. They had an illustration of both the better and the weaker side of self-education in the ease of Mr. Buckle, the author of the well-known 'History of Civilisation.' At the time of his greatest celebrity, ho (the Doan) used to bear it remarked that no man who bad been at a regular school or university could, on the one hand, have acquired such an enormous amount of multifarious knowledge and such a grasp of Ho many details ; while, on the other hand, no dtie but a solf-oducated man, feeding his mind hero and there, without sub- mission, without the usual traditions of common studios, could have fallen into so many paradoxes, so many negligoncos, and so many ignorancos. It was enough to state that one fact, in order to put them on their guard against such dangers, and to make them feel, on the other hand, the advantages of self-education. Over the wide fields of knowledge it was theirs to wander. The facts they acquired would probably take a deeper hold on their minds by having boon sought out by themselves, but not the loss should they remember that there wore qualifying and controlling influences derived from a more regular study which were of the greatest importance, and the absence of which they ought to take into account in judging of the more desultory and the more independent researches which they might have to make. A deaf person, if be might use a familiar illustration, might acquire, and often had acquired, an amount of knowledge and a vigour of will, by the exclusion of all the wear-Find-tear, of all the friction of outward influences, which filled the atmosphere of those who had the full possession of their senses; but nevertheless, a deaf person, in order not to bo misled in an extravagant estimate of his or her judg- ment, or his or her pursuits, should always be reminded that he has not the same moans of correcting his conclusions that he would have if he wore open to the sensible influence of the fibres of conversation, as generally called, which floated about in the general atmosphere, but which for him had no existence. Self-education was very much open to the advantages and disadvantages of deafneas,—knowledge from some entrances quite shut out. Such knowledge came In, occupying their minds more completely, but always needing to bo reminded that there was a surrounding vacuum."
That is quite true as regards the self-educated, and every young man, however carefully trained, who is studying anything of which he knows nothing, is in the precise position of the self- educated. The obstacle is very great, and very often the remedy
is far to seek. There are very few available Professors for the grown-ups, and their services are often most imperfect. In London it is possible to attend " lectures " on almost any sub- ject, but out of London a young man of the class we speak of has either to make great exertions or fudge along as he best can, wasting time, temper, and his store of eagerness to learn. Take, for instance, the case of a language. A man can learn German by himself, but it is with a terrible expenditure of misapplied energy, and to get taught is not so easy as it looks, lie probably does not like to join a class—" go to school again," as he terms it—and if he reads with a Professor by himself, he must Pay as much as a class, — that is, a sum which he feels quite sensibly, often, if he engages a real teacher, half-a-guinea an hour. Even if he makes up his mind to that, trusting speedily to dispense with assistance, he finds, nine times out of ten, that the Professor is accustomed to lads, not men, and that he is being taught in a way which, as he instinctively feels, is a waste of his resources. One secret at least of good "cramming,"—we mean that kind of " cramming " which is not a sham, but a rapid method of education—is that the " crammer " knows that men and boys should be taught in a somewhat different way. Then comes the stress not upon the brain, but upon the will, the sort of necessity which most men and all women feel for some "encouragement." A boy learns, to speak frankly, because he is made to learn, and a man under the same compulsion learns much quicker. If he must know this or that to get his income, he soon learns it. But to learn without positive necessity or prospect of imme- diately applying the knowledge is like sitting down to write what nobody will ever read,—a draft upon any but the very strongest wills. If any of the excellent people who advise self- education doubt that, let them just try an easy experiment, that of translating half a page of any language they do not thoroughly know, and then writing down the translation. They will find that till they wrote it they had shirked half the difficulties, had, in their own racy dialect, "jumped the sense" of the sentences. The man who by himself can compel himself to learn thoroughly, either wants the knowledge very much, or has a very resolute will ; and it is the average inan; who "rather wants to know," but "cannot absorb himself in it," whom we want to see helped. The study of a language, too, is the easiest of all forms of self-education. In trying to master a science, there is the further difficulty that you always believe you have learnt more than you have, for want of another's knowledge to measure by. There is no end to the half-unconscious conceit of the amateur physicist, who wastes himself in thinking out points which a fifth-rate professional would tell him had been settled years before.
Now, what is the best method of acquiring knowledge for a young man thus situated,—positive knowledge, we mean, and not knowledge which comes into the mind, as it were, through the pores of the skin. You may read great books, and talk to fine intelligences, and study art, and travel, and acquire experience, and still you will not master German or the laws of electricity, and those and the like are the things we presume you want to know. This is the point on which experts like Dean Stanley, who has seen whole generations of educated ignoramuses, and probably fretted himself because he did not know something— say, Syriac or Armenian—which nevertheless he had not resolu- tion to attack, ought to give the world some enlightenment. The literature of advice about the education of the young is endless, boundless, a weariness to the eyes and a burden to the ears ; but the advice on the education of men is wonderfully little, and very poor of its kind, except when, as in the case of the Dean's lecture, the education assumed to be wanted is the general culti- vation of the intelligence. There are plenty of Pundits on that, and if they did not differ quite so much, there would be a very useful consensus of opinion about it, but there is a want of direct advice by authoritative persons as to pe best methods of acquiring positive education in after-life. Are the men right who sit and "swat," as the Rugby boys say, over the Russian language, for instance, till they know everything except the pro- nunciation; or are the women right who form small classes and help one another along, with a sort of idea that bad Professors are better than none ; or is there some other course much bettor than these two ?
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