§ 7.

The impolicy of setting up a national organization for cultivating the popular mind, and commissioning the government to superintend this organization, is further seen in the general truth that every such organization is in spirit conservative, and not progressive. All institutions have an instinct of selfpreservation growing out of the selfishness of those connected with them. Being dependent for their vitality upon the continuance of existing arrangements, they naturally uphold these. Their roots are in the past and the present; never in the future. Change threatens them, modifies them, eventually destroys them; hence to change they are uniformly opposed. On the other hand, education, properly so called, is closely associated with change—is its pioneer—is the never-sleeping agent of revolution—is always fitting men for higher things, and unfitting them for things as they are. Therefore, between institutions whose very existence depends upon man continuing what he is, and true education, which is one of the instruments for making him something other than he is, there must always be enmity.

From the time of the Egyptian priesthood downwards, the conduct of corporations, whether political, ecclesiastical, or educational, has given proof of this. Some 300 years B.C., unlicensed Edition: current; Page: [342] schools were forbidden by the Athenian senate. In Rome, the liberty of teaching was attacked twice before the Christian era; and again, afterwards, by the Emperor Julian. The existing continental governments show, by their analogous policy, how persistent the tendency is. In the universality of censorships we see the same fact further illustrated. The celebrated saying of the Empress Catharine to her prime minister, well exhibits the way in which rulers regard the spread of knowledge. And whenever governments have undertaken to educate, it has been with the view of forestalling that spontaneous education which threatened their own supremacy. Witness the case of China, where diligently-impressed ideas, such as, “O! how magnificent are the affairs of government!” “O! what respect is due to the officers of government!” sufficiently indicate the intention. Witness, again, the case of Austria, where, in accordance with the will of the Emperor Francis, the training of the popular mind was entrusted to the Jesuits, that they might “counteract the propagandism of liberty, by the propagandism of superstition.”a Nor have there been wanting signs of a like spirit here in England. That attempt in Cobbett’s day to put down cheap literature, by an act which prevented weekly publications from being sold for less than sixpence, unmistakably indicated it. It was again exhibited in the reluctance with which the newspaper stamp duty was reduced, when resistance had become useless. And we may still see it in the double-facedness of a legislature which professes to favour popular enlightenment, and yet continues to raise a million and a quarter sterling yearly from “taxes on knowledge.”

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How unfriendly all ecclesiastical bodies have been to the spread of education every one knows. The obstinacy shown by the Brahmin in fighting against the truths of modern science—the fanaticism with which the Mahometan doctor ignores all books but the Koran—and the prejudice fostered by the religious institutions of our own country against the very name of philosophy—are kindred illustrations of the conduct which this self-conserving instinct produces. In that saying of the monks, “We must put down printing, or printing will put down us,” the universal motive was plainly expressed; as it was, again, through the mouth of that French bishop who denounced the Bell and Lancaster systems as inventions of the devil. Nor let any one conclude that the educational zeal latterly manifested by Church clergy indicates a new animus. Those who remember the bitterness with which Sunday schools were at first assailed by them; and those who mark how keenly they now compete with dissenters for the children of the poor, can see clearly enough that they are endeavouring to make the best of a necessity—that, having a more or less defined consciousness of the inevitability of educational progress, they wish to educate the people in allegiance to the Church.

Still more manifest becomes this obstructive tendency on considering that the very organizations devised for the spreading of knowledge, may themselves act as suppressors of it. Thus it is said, that Oxford was one of the last places in which the Newtonian philosophy was acknowledged. We read again, in the life of Locke, that “there was a meeting of the heads of houses at Oxford, where it was proposed to censure and discourage the reading of this essay (On the Human Understanding); and after various debates, it was concluded that without any public censure each head of a house shall endeavour to prevent its being read in his own college.” At Eton, too, in Shelley’s time, “Chemistry was a forbidden thing,” even to the banishment of chemical treatises. So uniformly has it been the habit of these endowed institutions to close the door against innovations, Edition: current; Page: [344] that they are amongst the last places to which any one looks for improvements in the art of teaching, or a better choice of subjects to be taught. The attitude of the universities towards natural science has been that of contemptuous non-recognition. College authorities have long resisted, either actively or passively, the making of physiology, chemistry, geology, &c., subjects of examination; and only of late, under pressure from without, and under the fear of being supplanted by rival institutions, have new studies been gingerly taken to.

Now, although vis inertiæ may be very useful in its place—although the resistance of office-holders has its function—although we must not quarrel with this instinct of self-preservation which gives to institutions their vitality, because it also upholds them through a lingering decrepitude—we may yet wisely refuse to increase its natural effect. It is very necessary to have in our social economy a conservative force as well as a reforming one, that there may be progress for the resultant; but it is highly impolitic to afford the one an artificial advantage over the other. To establish a state-education is to do this, however. The teaching organization itself, and the government which directs it, will inevitably lean to things as they are; and to give them control over the national mind, is to give them the means of repressing aspirations after things as they should be. Just that culture which seems compatible with their own preservation will these institutions allow, whilst just that culture which, by advancing society, threatens to sap their own foundations, or, in other words—just that culture which is most valuable, they will oppose.

The sanguine will perhaps hope that, though this has been the rule hitherto, it will not be the rule in future. Let them not deceive themselves. So long as men pursue private advantage at the expense of the common weal, that is to say—so long as government is needful at all, so long will this be true. Less marked the tendency will no doubt be in proportion as men are less unjustly selfish. But to whatever extent they lack perfect conscientiousness, to the same extent will vested Edition: current; Page: [345] interests sway them, and to the same extent will institutions resist change.