BOOKS.
POPULAR EDUCATION IN TRANCE.*
, • ropaka• Education in France. By Matthew Arnold. Longman and Co.
Viz do not know when we have read a work more valuable or more keenly interesting than Mr. Arnold's. Nominally a careful sketch of the French system of public instruction, it is really an elaborate essay upon the advantage of centralized or State action over the action of individuals. Mr. Arnold takes the side which is in Eng- land still unpopular, and which is therefore the one thinking men .ought most carefully to examine. Of all the evils which to-day impede progress there is none so injurious as the increasing habit of thinking in grooves. Men who contend that political science is not yet ab- solute, who believe in the possibility of forms of government other than mixed monarchy, are apt to be set down as mere eccentrics, whose ideas can serve only to amuse. Mr. Arnold believes that the State ought to exercise "an active and penetrating domestic control," and he supports this view by arguments full of profound thought, ex- pressed with that jealous accuracy, and flavoured with that delicate aroma of style which belongs to poets who write prose, almost alone. Mr. Arnold's line of thought is in this order. Holding with De 7ocqueville that society tends towards democracy, lie denies that the tendency is evil, looks on it rather as a process neither evil nor good, the natural efflorescence of a plant set in a soil favourable to that out- . turn. He approves even equality, for " in France, that very equality, which is so impetuously decried, while it has by no means improved (it is said) the upper classes of French society, has undoubtedly given to the lower classes, to the body of the common people, a self-respect, an enlargement of spirit, a consciousness of counting for something in their country's action, which has raised them in the scale of humanity.
• The common people in France seem to me the soundest part of the French nation. They seem to me more free from the two opposite degradations of multitudes, brutality and servility; to have a more developed human life, more of what distinguishes elsewhere the cul- tured classes from the vulgar, than the common people in any other country with which I am acquainted."
We suspect Mr. Arnold confounds the effect of civilization on a Southern race with that of equalitv, and that he would find in Italy, -where the multitude cares little- for equality, a lowest class still higher in the human scale, while the American rowdy, who is the "equal" of the President, is not precisely of the type be would ear- nestly approve. But we may let that pass. Democracy being merely a natural tendency, and therefore irresistible, it is essential to pro- tect it from being "Americanized," from governing in accordance with low and selfish instead of grand ideas. This protection Eng- land has hitherto found in its aristocracy. That aristocracy, which Mr. Arnold, who has studied Rome, and has not forgotten "Venice, strangely calls the "most successful" of aristocracies, with many short-comings, has at least performed this great function—it has ele- vated the national idea. The Patricial has made the English people, as it once made the Roman, "a people in the grand style," with aspira- tions, that is, and ideals above the tenor of their daily lives. The aris- tocracy is, however, gradually losing power, gradually, because of the excellence of the aristocracy itself, and also on aceeunt of the intense self-reliance and individuality of the English race. It is only when men rely on each other from a sense of their own weakness that de- mocracy perceives its true force—the strength which comes from cohesion. Still it is losing its hold, and the first necessity now for Englishmen is to discover a power -which shall exercise the same elevating influence, and prevent that Americanizing style of thought and action to which democracy when left to itself inevitably tends. This power Mr. Arnold would find in "the influence of the State:" "Our society is probably destined to become much more democratic: who will rive the tone to the nation then? That is the question. The greatest men of America, her Washingtons, Hamiltona, Madisons, well understanding that aristo- cratical institutions are not in all times and places possible; well perceiving that in their Republic there was no place for these; comprehending, therefore, that from these that security for national unity and greatness, an ideal commanding popular reverence, was not to be obtained, but knowing that this ideal was anoispensable, would have been rejoiced to found a substitute for it in the dignity and authority dale State. They deplored the weakness and insignificance of the executive power as a calamity. When the inevitable course of events has made our self-government something really like that of America, when it has removed or weakened that security for a noble national spirit, and therefore for unity, which we possessed in aristocracy, will the substitute of the &ate be equally wanting to us? If it is, then the dangers of America will really be ours: the multitude in power, with no ideal to elevate or guide it; the spirit of the nation vulgarized ; ninny imperiled because there is no institution grand enough to unite round."
Mr. Arnold is, of course, well aware that in seeking an ideal in the State he is running counter to the most cherished predilections of Englishmen—to the ideas which have hitherto lain at the very base of our national action. But he contends that this horror of State power has arisen from circumstances only, and circumstances which have passed away: A magnate of course distrusts State 'sower, for it limits his individual action, his personal weight and vivacity in the conduct of affairs. The middle classes, on the other hand, dread State power, because they have never known it except as a hostile power, have no idea of the action of such an authority aural by themselves, and directed to their own benefit and ameliora- tion : "The State lent its machinery and authority to the aristocratical and ecclesi- astical party, which it regarded as its best support. The party which suffered comprised the flower and strength of that middle class of society, always very flourishing and robust in this country. That powerful class, from this specimen of the administrative activity of the State, conceived a strong antipathy against
• all intervention of Government in certain spheres. An active, stringent adminis-
tration in those spheres, meant at that time a High Church and Prelatic ad- ministration in them, an administration galling to the Puritan party and to the middle class; and this aggrieved class had naturally no proneness to draw nice philosophical distinctions between State-action in these spheres, as a thing for abstract consideration, and State-action In them as they practically felt it and supposed themselves likely long to feel it, guided by their adversaries. In the minds of the English middle class, therefore, State-action in social and domestic concerns became inextricably associated with the idea of a Conventicle Act, a Five-Mile Act, an Act of Uniformity. Their abhorrence of such a State-action as this, they extended to State-action in general; and, having never known a beneficent and just State-power, they enlarged their hatred of a cruel and partial State-power, the only one they bad ever known, into a maxim that no State_ power was to be trusted, that the least action, in certain provinces, was rigorousle to be denied to the State, whenever this was possible."
Of course the direction and extent of State action will be controlled by the national character, which is essentially individual, but " Inasmuch, therefore, as collective action is more efficacious than isolated individual efforts, a nation having great and complicated matters to deal with must greatly gain by employing the action of the State. Only, the State-power which it employs should be a power which really represents its best self, and whose action its intelligence and justice can heartily avow and adopt; not a power which reflects its inferior self, and of whose action, as of its own second-rate action, it has perpetually to he ashamed. To offer a worthy initiative, and to set a standard of rational and equitable action—this is what the nation should expect of the State ; and the more the State fulfils this expectation, the more will it be accepted in practice for what in idea it must always be. People will not then ask the State what title it has to commend or reward genius and merit, since com- mendation and reward imply an attitude of superiority: for it will then be felt that the State truly acts for the English nation; and the genius of the English nation is greater than the genius of any individual, greatereven than Shakapeare's genius, for it includes the genius of Newton also."
Relying thus upon the action of the State as a general principle, Mr. Arnold turns to it with special confidence as the grand agent for instruction. The middle class needs a culture which it does not receive, which existing schools cannot confer, and the want of which is dangerous, not only to its own character, but to the strength of its political position: "The course taken in the next fifty years by the middle classes of this nation, will probably give a decisive turn to its history. If they will not seek the alliance of the State for their own elevation, if they go on exaggerating their spirit of individualism, if they persist in their jealousy of all governmental action, if they cannot learn that the antipathies and the Shibboleths of a past age are now an anachronism for them—that will not prevent them, probably, from getting the rule of their country for a season, but they will certainly Americanise it. They will rule it by their energy, but they will deteriorate it by their low ideals and want of culture. In the decline of the aristocratical element, which in some sort supplied an ideal to ennoble the spirit of the nation and to keep it together, there will be no other element present to perform this service. It is in itself a serious calamity for a nation that its tone of feeling and grandeur of spirit should be lowered or dulled: but the calamity appears far more serious still, when we consider that, as we have seen, this high tone of feeling supplies a principle of cohesion by which a nation is kept united ; that without this, not only its nobleness is endangered, but its unity. Another consideration is, that the middle classes, remaining as they are now, with their narrow and somewhat harsh and unattractive spirit and culture, will almost certainly fail to mould or assimilate the masses below them, whose sympathies are at the present Moment actually wider and more liberal than theirs. They arrive, these masses, eager to enter into possession of the world, to gain a more vivid sense of their own life and activity: in this their irrepressible development, their natural educators and initiators are those immediately above them, the middle classes. If these classes cannot win their sympathy or give them their direction, society is in danger of falling into anarchy."
Harrow and Eton are kadmirable schools for the aristocracy, but the public schools which are to do for the middle class what Eton does for the upper ten thousand, must be provided and controlled, like the the French lyceums, by the State.
We have preferred this analysis of Mr. Arnold's view to any dis- cussion, because the objections to his scheme of politics rise instinc- tively in the mind of almost every Englishman. The most forcible is perhaps this, that Mr. Arnold, like all advocates of State action, mistakes effect for cause. A stream can rise no higher than its source, and a people able to choose a government fitted to act as a national ideal would need no ideal at all. Democracy, so far from choosing a body of rulers higher than themselves, would probably choose men, as in America, a little lower than themselves, in order *el to be led by their superiors in intellect any more than in birth or station. The use of a strong State power, against which we are by no means arguing, is not to raise up a standard for national aspira- tion, but to prevent that dissipation of effectiveness which is the permanent evil of weak organizations. The State may raise, and we believe would raise, better lyceums than individuals, but only because it would concentrate those scattered fragments of teaching ability which are now wasted and deadened by a pauperizing competition. The school of a thousand boys, governed by forty masters, highly paid, selected, and freed from competition, inevitably produces a higher result than twenty schools ruled by the same number of masters whose notion of success is bounded by the figure to which the bills can safely be increased.
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