THE ENGLISH DISTRUST OF LETTERS.
AFEW days ago the public read in a newspaper of a legacy left by a scientific man to found " a chair of rational logic " upon somewhat new lines. The testator desired that not only a candidate's learning but his ignorance should be taken into favourable consideration ; a knowledge of either Greek or German was to count against him.
We are always hearing that examinations are poor tests of ability. Brain power, it is said, cannot be gauged by skill shown in essay writing or by the courage displayed under cross- examination. Scholastic enthusiasts are always trying to think of some better way of appraising a man's mind than by taking stock of his stores of learning and expressing the result in figures —ten standing for this accomplishment, and twelve for that, &c., &c. It is, however, an innovation hitherto unthought of to consider the quality of his ignorance and give him marks for a serviceable lack of acquirement. No school has ever yet advertised " Good commercial education ; the cultivation of useful ignorance a speciality." Of course you cannot teach a boy everything. The rival claims of classics, mathematics, and modem languages are under constant process of exhausting argumentation ; but it is one thing to teach upon certain lines and quite another to penalize the scholar for what he already knows in other directions.
We hope this new form of odium theologicum will not become common among educationists. Their fights might be as detrimental to the cause of learning as those of priests and presbyters have proved in the past to the cause of true religion and virtue. Speaking of religion, what Church to-day would venture to declare any learned acquirement detrimental to the chances of success of any man trying for a theological post ? All the poverty of the Church of England would not, we are sure, induce any single Bishop to accept the responsibility for even a bursary offered on such terms. The ridicule which the serious consideration of such an offer would bring upon the Church would outweigh a million times any advantage to be derived from the pious testator's proposal.
After all, however ludicrous it may appear when stated in black and white, are we not all guilty from time to time of this unconscious exaltation of ignorance ? Not long ago the present writer heard an educated man declare that while he liked a certain doctor very much as a companion, he should never consult him in illness. Ho should doubt, he said, the medical efficiency of a man who showed so much acquaintance with European literature. Obviously, the critic had in his own mind examined his friend and deducted marks for his unnecessary
learning. Before the war we all had a notion that a liberal education unfitted a man or a woman for ordinary practical work. It was with amazement that the majority of people found themselves constrained to admit that an educated woman could become proficient in nursing, cooking, food-serving, housework, and landwork in half the time that it had hitherto taken to make an expert of her less-trained sister. She proved herself better able to " turn her hand to anything " because she had been accustomed to turn her mind to something for a given number of hours each day. The world, however, has been by no means entirely converted by this experience. We still distrust the power of a man of letters to become a man of action, and many stupid people still take it for granted that a person who studies all sides of a question is hardly worth having as an ally. He is sure, they think, to lack conviction, and therefore strength and loyalty. There is, of course, something to be said on their side. Small mental powers often seem still smaller when dissipated over a wide ground. What they forget is that an ignorant friend is often a greater source of danger to a cause than an instructed enemy.
There is without doubt a latent distrust of wide knowledge in the simpler Englishman's mind. He does not argue about the matter, but we believe that if we could get to the root of his sus- picion we should find a fear that learning destroys sympathy. This suspicion affects not only those who are more or less ignorant of all things, but those who have applied their whole minds to one subject alone to the exclusion of the general field of learning. A knowledge of art or a strong religious proclivity does not commend a scientific man to his fellows. They scrutinize his mental processes distrustfully, and almost all men tend to screen their acquaintance with " off subjects " or to introduce them to their co-religionists as " hobbies." These who do not do so are obviously in danger of losing credit. Of course, in the case of trained minds the feeling is much less blatant than in the case of the untrained. The signs of positive spite against education, a real grudging of the advantages obtained by it, are to-day ominous among the ignorant, and may lead the masses to throw from them the best instruments in their power. Resent- ment against education is far more obvious just now than resent- ment against other advantages—for instance, birth. The idea that social position makes people " uppish " is out of fashion. They are not " uppish " in the least so far as anyone not immediately below them, not-threatening their social supremacy, is concerned. It is the man of training, who has passed long years under mental and physical discipline, who seems " uppish " to the world at large, who seems, in fact, to have acquired contempt among his other mental acquisitions.
Is it not possible that it is this natural distrust of which we have been speaking which induces the English Public School boy —and man—to assume a conventional modesty in regard to accomplishment which strikes Continental and Americans as little short of insane ? An English boy will admit nothing in his own favour voluntarily, but if, metaphorically speaking, he is put to the question, he would rather say he could write good Latin verse than that he is an admirable cricketer. Athletics have, we think, been added as an after-thought to the list of things of which boasting is forbidden. The custom began in the mental sphere. The mass of boys are determined that the sympathy of the herd, the true esprit de corps, shall be main- tained. If a member of the herd does what the mass cannot, he must keep the fact in the background. Perhaps, on the whole, their rough common-sense may serve them well. The rule seems to have been still more strictly enforced lately. The education given in any one school is far more varied than it was. The classical and modern sides are widely divergent. There is danger lest the successful should be divided not only from the unsuccessful mass, but among themselves. It is obvious that in later life the unity of the educated is endangered by this variety, and there is a great deal to be said for the days when every man of a certain position in life had had " the same education," whether he became a learned don in his later years or never opened another book after twenty. The boy is father to the man, and it behoves us to take a lesson from our sons, to mask our differences and hold together. Where doctors disagree the simple decide—to disregard them.
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