BRUMMAGEM MORALITY.
THE Birmingham School Board is about to commence an experiment of singular intellectual interest. That Board, as our readers know, is of all Boards in the country the one
which is most strictly representative of the secular idea in education. Its members were elected because they were most hostile to denominational instruction, their rules entirely forbid religions teaching of any kind, even teaching which assumes in any overt manner the existence of God; and they leave in- struction in morals, practical as well as theoretical, to teachers outside the school. Moreover, they are an efficient Board. If that system will succeed anywhere, if the development of the in- tellect is anywhere a good substitute for the development of the whole nature, it will be in Birmingham, where the experiment is not spoiled by half-heartedness, or inefficiency, or popular re-
sistance. This Board, thus strong and thus favourably situated, has had six years at least of full experience in its own system, and it does not like the result, does not like it even enough to bear with it any longer. What has happened we do not know, but the Birmingham School Board, with its personal pride as well as its intellectual convictions deeply involved in the success of perfect Secularism, has to come to doubt whether unmixed secularism is a good basis for education. Its chairman, Mr. Dixon, has proposed, and has carried by a large majority, a vote declaring that morality ought to be systematically taught, in addition to all secular informa- tion; and one of his supporters, or according to some accounts he himself, has stated, without being instantly put down, that if in the teaching of systematic morality the word "God" should be mentioned, he did not know that there would be very much harm in that. It is true that a fanatic on the Board who ven- tured to suggest the Bible as a text-book was at once voted down, and that the wild suggestion that the idea of God might innocently enter into the idea of morality was a passing °biter dictum, so that the Board has not altogether departed from its pristine dogmas ; but still, being in the fore front of all secular corporations, it has recognised that morality is part of education, and that morality should be taught "systematically," and not by accident.
This is an immense concession, and one involving an experi- ment that, if fairly and honestly carried out, the whole world will watch with surpassing interest. The separation of children from the human race to see what language they will speak will be nothing to it,—for language, if only it is intelligible, does not matter to humanity ; and morals, by the consent even of an in- telligent and secular School Board, do. The children are to be taught them, and taught them "systematically," as if they were as important a subject of study as geography or arithmetic, or even reading and writing ; and they are to be taught them., too, in some original manner. God is not to be alluded to "sys- tematically," though a teacher who mentions that hypothesis will not necessarily be dismissed. The idea of the Board obviously is that morality can not only exist, but be taught effectively, without any religious sanction ; that the philosophers are right, and not the parsons ; and they are convinced enough to spend money in demonstrating their conviction. They are aoing a service to the world.
We shall be most curious to hear, first of all, which morality they are going to teach. That is a very curious point, though we dare say the majority of the Board, intelligent as it is, will open its eyes rather widely at the interrogation. It is one, however, that will need a practical reply. The assumption of almost all advocates of secular education in this country—of all, indeed, except a few men so extreme that the body of the people do not listen to them—is, that there is only one morality, namely, the morality which Western Europeans, after centuries of thinking and experience, have derived from the leading prin- ciples of Christianity. Christianity, without sanctions, or hopes, or imaginative aids, or dogmas, is what English Secularists mean when they talk of morality ; but that is not the only one pos- sible. There is the one nearest to it in many respects—the Buddhist morality—which teaches nearly the same rules, though it bases them not on Christ's revelation of immortality, but on the idea that existence is pain, and that the ultimate hope being non-existence, which is only possible by the absorp- tion of the individual into the universal All, which may or may not be God—there are two schools about that—it is well to become as passionless as that All as quickly as possible. Buddhism rests not on self-sacrifice, but self-suppression. That morality fairly taught to a race like ours might pro-
duce something very fine—would certainly suppress theft, drunkenness, and impurity, though it has as yet not succeeded at all perfectly in those ends in Ceylon or Burmah ; but then it might suppress some other things also which are highly approved, we imagine, by a Birmingham School Board. It is rather difficult, for example, to imagine a convinced Buddhist, with an intelligence, caring two straws about "industrial progress," or "content in labour," or "thrift," or any of what may be called the English or civilised working-class virtues. He would be rather apt to think, being for a moralist unusually consistent, that a man who earned nothing, but perpetually meditated, and suppressed his passions completely, even the widely-diffused passion for having break- fast and dinner, was, on the whole, very near to the true essence of morality,—which is not, in his view, to ennoble oneself, still less to ennoble others, least of all to get on and make money, but to get nearer by self-suppression to the One non-material All. Are the School Board going to teach that? we really could not find it in our hearts to oppose the experiment ; which when applied to a race like ours, which cannot meditate in the Buddhist way for five minutes, and has so instinctive a desire for action, would be intensely interesting. But if they are going to teach that, they must just remember that the Buddhist ideal is a recluse, meditating for years and fed by worshippers, and not a highly respectable maker of imita- tion jewellery, with three quarters of a million in Railway debentures. Next, there is the Stoic morality. That is a fine morality, in its way, and has the advantage of not requiring any allusion to God to make it intelligible. The mind is to be dominant over the body, to be perfectly independent of external circumstance, pain included, and to be incessantly striving—to depict the system in its purest form—towards finite deification, —that is, towards a condition in which mind is master of all external things, slightly, in fact, contemptuous of them all, life included. The morality of Stoicism involves the ac- ceptance of virtuous suicide. With a race like ours, which has strength in it when it gets fair-play, that would be a very definite and visible system of morality,—only would Bir- mingham quite like it ? Stoics do not seem to care about money. A pauper in a workhouse might be, under favourable conditions, as noble a Stoic as Marcus Aurelius. One can even conceive of a Stoic, penetrated with his own conception of morality and living fairly up to it, having the audacity to despise a button-factory and its superintendents, or even—if such a horror were con- ceivable in a country like this—declaring buttons superfluities, and that one garment, buttonless and seamless, was sufficient for the true hero. What would Birmingham say to that, and where would be the universal consensus which is, in secular eyes, the first test of any moral system? We shouldlike dearly to see the experiment tried, but it never will be, we fear, in Birmingham, where folks like good dinners, and think "getting on" gospel, and are too convinced of this world's comfort, and too doubtful about their fate in another, ever to quit the former voluntarily. Then there is the Utilitarian morality. That is a working morality of a kind, if anybody could only settle whether I am to decide for myself what is useful or You are to decide for me. If I am to decide, then, as my conception of my own advantage is to be the rule of morality, the pupil may be a rather unpleasant person, my law leading me, for example, to whip my workmen into accepting wages at my discretion. Or if You are to decide, then it is conceivable that the morality of submission will be the chief one taught,—sub- mission, for example, in politics, which in Birmingham eyes is the reverse of a virtue. Or perhaps Law is to be the basis of the "systematic" teaching, and indeed we see that was suggested in the discussion. Well, Law is a good thing to teach to possible law- breakers, only as it allows perfect idleness, and passes over im- purity, and does not punish lying, its completeness as a code for children is not quite demonstrated. Or perhaps all men are to judge of utility. Well, does Birmingham know what all men desire, or all wise men, or all good men Has it, for ex- ample, the faintest notion how to reconcile Mill, Pascal, Carlo Borromeo, and Dr. Fraser P We fear greatly that Birmingham will be driven back on the usual interpretation of the word" morality," namely, the system of action deducible from the principles of Christianity ; and if it is, we ask the Board with all respect what it expects to get from accepting that system, and excluding the guarantees and sanctions of the system from its teaching ? Its members are sensible men, open-minded men, as this vote proves, and unusually practical men. Do they really think it worth while, do they think it any- thing but an embarrassing absurdity, to teach the Christian sys- tem of ethics, and never mention Christ, to take enormous trouble to avoid describing the Founder of the ethical scheme which they admit that they cannot do without ? Would they not on any
• other subject of thought whatever think such a programme rather finicking, and timid, and ridiculous? Suppose they approved the Code Napoleon, which is quite possible, that Code being, in the main, the most modern form of the fine Roman Law, and wished it taught in their schools. Would not they consider anybody who objected to a teacher for mentioning who Napoleon was, and what his ideas were, and why his policy succeeded and failed, rather a pedantic fool than otherwise? We are perfectly certain they would, and teaching Christian ethics while ordering the suppression of the name of Christ, and de- claring it an irregular concession to allow the mention of God, is just as great a folly. It is teaching geometry without affirm- ing or denying the axioms. We say nothing of the utter absurdity of bringing up thousands of children in possible ignorance of the creed professed or denied by all around them, though that has always struck us as the oddest of omissions from the point of view of convenience, and only ask whether, even to them- selves, they can on intellectual grounds justify their selected method. We are not asking, let them remember, that Christianity should be taught "systematically." We are asking, as we have asked all through, that the teacher should be allowed to teach what he believes to be of the essence
of his subject, and not be bound and swathed in tapes, invented, as far as we can see, for the very purpose of making him a less efficient teacher than he would be without them. We want the Darwinian to be allowed, when he teaches evolution, to talk about Darwin, without being dismissed either for bigotry or imaginativeness.
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