COMMON THINGS AND UNCOMMON RESULTS.
THE "common things " which Lord Ashburton proposed to extend the knowledge of are the highest things within the practical know- ledge of mankind. It usually is the case that those things which involve the highest powers and the greatest beneficence are the most common ; for indeed what is univeral, but the highest power of all ? what is all-prevailing but the law which creates life and sustains it in action ? Lord Ashburton proposes, by the simple stimulus of prizes for a specific kind of proficiency, to direct the attention of teachers, and through them of pupils; to the simplest laws of life in its natural and social aspect. As an example of his own meaning, he takes that familiar instrument of convenience the common pump, and suggests that the pupil should be taught to know in what the power and advantage of a pump consists—in its lever and its sucker ; involving a knowledge of the laws of me- chanics and hydraulics—the common laws of those sciences which are most commonly used, which are most easily understood, but which are most often overlooked in the process of teaching. Again he says, one home is more comfortable than another: why ? Be- cause in one home the mother of the family has acquired a better knowledge of the practical laws of economy—laws which may be learned by observation and systematically taught. If men knew the laws of nature, the powers of mechanics, the use of natural resources, the inevitable working of economy, we should not see them waste their substance, live in the midst of active causes of ill health which can be removed, or interrupting the course of industry to drive prices up or down, against the inevitable working of commerce. Neither the manufacturer nor the labourer would then seek to triumph over the other in a contest which is destructive to both ; nor would the poor any longer ascribe the flericeaueof food to the baker or the government, and break the peace se corn is scarce. It has been the custom of education hitherto, after passing the mere elements of its own machinery— its alphabet or its nomenclature—to shoot over the heads of the people. Men acquire knowledge to possess it, rather than to im- part it or to use it. Simple knowledge is not enough. There were hundreds at Athens and Rome who knew more than Demos- thenes, who knew more than Cicero ; yet there was but one De- mosthenes, but one Cicero—men possessing above their fellow- citizens the power of putting their knowledge to a practical use in influencing the minds of others. Such is the duty of the teacher. There were many men in Edinburgh and Lo,ndon who knew more than James Watt; but James Watt had the faculty of applying what he knew to practical business,—the duty of the student who has to use his knowledge in actual life. In the form of a small money prize, which will be very valuable to the young and to those in humble circumstances Lord Ashburton proposes to make a commencement in causing tutor and student to feel the value of practical knowledge practically applied; and it is most likely that as his example will be followed up at no distant date in several of the humbler schools of the country, practical philosophy and eco- nomy will be taught in a manner that 'will influence the life both of teacher and student, to the elevation of whole classes thus leavened.
The result is almost certain to follow from the moving of the cause : as a fire spreads from the first spark, so the idea kindled by Lord Ashburton is tolerably sure to spread wherever element- ary education is in motion. But if so' what a remarkable dis- tinction will be observed between this class of practical philoso- phers, teaching in a new kind of Socratic philosophy, and that " higher " class, as it is called, which follows the old plan of pack- ing erudition into a mind and leaving to chance the oozing out of acme portion of that knowledge for communication to others, or for practical use. The Ashburton class will be philosophers in the truest sense of the word, and by the contrast some of our most distinguished academics will appear no better than Laputan phi_ losophers. Oxford will have to go down to the union school to learn methods; and from diocesan charities a new system of in. struction may perhaps ascend to higher schools. But it is possible to discern even a further consequence. Lord Ashburton proposes to bring the simple and the humble directly acquainted with the laws of nature and of science, and to apply these laws in the most direct manner. Children who become ac- quainted with the working of natural laws are noted for putting extremely "awkward questions " to their elders ; especially wish- ing to know how domestic usages, and possibly often parental habits, can be reconciled to the precepts which are taught to the young, or to the explanation of even a natural law. Why do you drink, the child might ask, if the continued exhibition of alcohol operates as a poison on the human frame? But if the grown child of society is brought to contem- plate the simple end of natural laws, and to apply those to actual life, what extremely awkward questions might suggest themselves to the official parent of the state in regard to the incon- sistency of our habitual regimen of society and social arrangements with the laws that we profess to explore by science and to sanc- tion by religion ? If philosophy opens the eyes of its grown chil- dren, it must be prepared, not only to answer the questions that the grown children may ask, but to amend its own ways. In other words, our legislators, statesmen, and moralists, must them- selves begin a course in the practical school, in order to keep up with the pupils whom they are beginning to put in the right path before themselves.
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