Essays On Education And Kindred Subjects (Fiscle Part- 11) - Herbert Spencer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📗
- Author: Herbert Spencer
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Self-Defeating. The Strong Will And Untiring Activity Due To Abundant
Animal Vigour, Go Far To Compensate Even Great Defects Of Education; And
When Joined With That Quite Adequate Education Which May Be Obtained
Without Sacrificing Health, They Ensure An Easy Victory Over Competitors
Enfeebled By Excessive Study: Prodigies Of Learning Though They May Be.
A Comparatively Small And Ill-Made Engine, Worked At High Pressure, Will
Do More Than A Large And Well-Finished One Worked At Low-Pressure. What
Folly Is It, Then, While Finishing The Engine, So To Damage The Boiler
That It Will Not Generate Steam! Once More, The System Is A Mistake, As
Involving A False Estimate Of Welfare In Life. Even Supposing It Were A
Means To Worldly Success, Instead Of A Means To Worldly Failure, Yet, In
The Entailed Ill-Health, It Would Inflict A More Than Equivalent Curse.
What Boots It To Have Attained Wealth, If The Wealth Is Accompanied By
Ceaseless Ailments? What Is The Worth Of Distinction, If It Has Brought
Hypochondria With It? Surely No One Needs Telling That A Good Digestion,
A Bounding Pulse, And High Spirits, Are Elements Of Happiness Which No
External Advantages Can Out-Balance. Chronic Bodily Disorder Casts A
Gloom Over The Brightest Prospects; While The Vivacity Of Strong Health
Gilds Even Misfortune. We Contend, Then, That This Over-Education Is
Vicious In Every Way--Vicious, As Giving Knowledge That Will Soon Be
Forgotten; Vicious, As Producing A Disgust For Knowledge; Vicious, As
Neglecting That Organisation Of Knowledge Which Is More Important Than
Its Acquisition; Vicious, As Weakening Or Destroying That Energy Without
Which A Trained Intellect Is Useless; Vicious, As Entailing That
Ill-Health For Which Even Success Would Not Compensate, And Which Makes
Failure Doubly Bitter. On Women The Effects Of This Forcing System Are,
If Possible, Even More Injurious Than On Men. Being In Great Measure
Debarred From Those Vigorous And Enjoyable Exercises Of Body By Which
Boys Mitigate The Evils Of Excessive Study, Girls Feel These Evils In
Their Full Intensity. Hence, The Much Smaller Proportion Of Them Who
Grow Up Well-Made And Healthy. In The Pale, Angular, Flat-Chested Young
Ladies, So Abundant In London Drawing-Rooms, We See The Effect Of
Merciless Application, Unrelieved By Youthful Sports; And This Physical
Degeneracy Hinders Their Welfare Far More Than Their Many
Accomplishments Aid It. Mammas Anxious To Make Their Daughters
Attractive, Could Scarcely Choose A Course More Fatal Than This, Which
Sacrifices The Body To The Mind. Either They Disregard The Tastes Of The
Opposite Sex, Or Else Their Conception Of Those Tastes Is Erroneous. Men
Care Little For Erudition In Women; But Very Much For Physical Beauty,
Good Nature, And Sound Sense. How Many Conquests Does The Blue-Stocking
Make Through Her Extensive Knowledge Of History? What Man Ever Fell In
Love With A Woman Because She Understood Italian? Where Is The Edwin Who
Was Brought To Angelina's Feet By Her German? But Rosy Cheeks And
Laughing Eyes Are Great Attractions. A Finely Rounded Figure Draws
Admiring Glances. The Liveliness And Good Humour That Overflowing Health
Produces, Go A Great Way Towards Establishing Attachments. Every One
Knows Cases Where Bodily Perfections, In The Absence Of All Other
Recommendations, Have Incited A Passion That Carried All Before It; But
Scarcely Any One Can Point To A Case Where Intellectual Acquirements,
Apart From Moral Or Physical Attributes, Have Aroused Such A Feeling.
The Truth Is That, Out Of The Many Elements Uniting In Various
Proportions To Produce In A Man's Breast The Complex Emotion We Call
Love, The Strongest Are Those Produced By Physical Attractions; The Next
In Order Of Strength Are Those Produced By Moral Attractions; The
Weakest Are Those Produced By Intellectual Attractions; And Even These
Are Dependent Less On Acquired Knowledge Than On Natural
Faculty--Quickness, Wit, Insight. If Any Think The Assertion A
Derogatory One, And Inveigh Against The Masculine Character For Being
Thus Swayed; We Reply That They Little Know What They Say When They Thus
Call In Question The Divine Ordinations. Even Were There No Obvious
Meaning In The Arrangement, We Might Be Sure That Some Important End Was
Subserved. But The Meaning Is Quite Obvious To Those Who Examine. When
We Remember That One Of Nature's Ends, Or Rather Her Supreme End, Is The
Welfare Of Posterity; Further That, In So Far As Posterity Are
Concerned, A Cultivated Intelligence Based On A Bad _Physique_ Is Of
Little Worth, Since Its Descendants Will Die Out In A Generation Or Two;
And Conversely That A Good _Physique_, However Poor The Accompanying
Mental Endowments, Is Worth Preserving, Because, Throughout Future
Generations, The Mental Endowments May Be Indefinitely Developed; We
Perceive How Important Is The Balance Of Instincts Above Described. But,
Advantage Apart, The Instincts Being Thus Balanced, It Is Folly To
Persist In A System Which Undermines A Girl's Constitution That It May
Overload Her Memory. Educate As Highly As Possible--The Higher The
Better--Providing No Bodily Injury Is Entailed (And We May Remark, In
Passing, That A Sufficiently High Standard Might Be Reached Were The
Parrot-Faculty Cultivated Less, And The Human Faculty More, And Were The
Discipline Extended Over That Now Wasted Period Between Leaving School
And Being Married). But To Educate In Such Manner, Or To Such Extent, As
To Produce Physical Degeneracy, Is To Defeat The Chief End For Which The
Toil And Cost And Anxiety Are Submitted To. By Subjecting Their
Daughters To This High-Pressure System, Parents Frequently Ruin Their
Prospects In Life. Besides Inflicting On Them Enfeebled Health, With All
Part 1 Chapter 4 (Physical Education) Pg 63Its Pains And Disabilities And Gloom; They Not Unfrequently Doom Them To
Celibacy.
The Physical Education Of Children Is Thus, In Various Ways, Seriously
Faulty. It Errs In Deficient Feeding; In Deficient Clothing; In
Deficient Exercise (Among Girls At Least); And In Excessive Mental
Application. Considering The Regime As A Whole, Its Tendency Is Too
Exacting: It Asks Too Much And Gives Too Little. In The Extent To Which
It Taxes The Vital Energies, It Makes The Juvenile Life Far More Like
The Adult Life Than It Should Be. It Overlooks The Truth That, As In The
Foetus The Entire Vitality Is Expended In Growth--As In The Infant,
The Expenditure Of Vitality In Growth Is So Great As To Leave Extremely
Little For Either Physical Or Mental Action; So Throughout Childhood And
Youth, Growth Is The Dominant Requirement To Which All Others Must Be
Subordinated: A Requirement Which Dictates The Giving Of Much And The
Taking Away Of Little--A Requirement Which, Therefore, Restricts The
Exertion Of Body And Mind In Proportion To The Rapidity Of Growth--A
Requirement Which Permits The Mental And Physical Activities To Increase
Only As Fast As The Rate Of Growth Diminishes.
The _Rationale_ Of This High-Pressure Education Is That It Results From
Our Passing Phase Of Civilisation. In Primitive Times, When Aggression
And Defence Were The Leading Social Activities, Bodily Vigour With Its
Accompanying Courage Were The Desiderata; And Then Education Was Almost
Wholly Physical: Mental Cultivation Was Little Cared For, And Indeed, As
In Feudal Ages, Was Often Treated With Contempt. But Now That Our State
Is Relatively Peaceful--Now That Muscular Power Is Of Use For Little
Else Than Manual Labour, While Social Success Of Nearly Every Kind
Depends Very Much On Mental Power; Our Education Has Become Almost
Exclusively Mental. Instead Of Respecting The Body And Ignoring The
Mind, We Now Respect The Mind And Ignore The Body. Both These Attitudes
Are Wrong. We Do Not Yet Realise The Truth That As, In This Life Of
Ours, The Physical Underlies The Mental, The Mental Must Not Be
Developed At The Expense Of The Physical. The Ancient And Modern
Conceptions Must Be Combined.
Perhaps Nothing Will So Much Hasten The Time When Body And Mind Will
Both Be Adequately Cared For, As A Diffusion Of The Belief That The
Preservation Of Health Is A _Duty_. Few Seem Conscious That There Is
Such A Thing As Physical Morality. Men's Habitual Words And Acts Imply
The Idea That They Are At Liberty To Treat Their Bodies As They Please.
Disorders Entailed By Disobedience To Nature's Dictates, They Regard
Simply As Grievances: Not As The Effects Of A Conduct More Or Less
Flagitious. Though The Evil Consequences Inflicted On Their Dependents,
And On Future Generations, Are Often As Great As Those Caused By Crime;
Yet They Do Not Think Themselves In Any Degree Criminal. It Is True
That, In The Case Of Drunkenness, The Viciousness Of A Bodily
Transgression Is Recognised; But None Appear To Infer That, If This
Bodily Transgression Is Vicious, So Too Is Every Bodily Transgression.
The Fact Is, That All Breaches Of The Laws Of Health Are _Physical
Sins_. When This Is Generally Seen, Then, And Perhaps Not Till Then,
Will The Physical Training Of The Young Receive The Attention It
Deserves.
[1] _Cyclopædia Of Practical Medicine._
[2] _Cyclopædia Of Practical Medicine._
[3] _Cyclopædia Of Anatomy And Physiology._
[4] Morton's _Cyclopædia Of Agriculture_.
[5] Morton's _Cyclopædia Of Agriculture_.
[6] It Is Needful To Remark That Children Whose Legs And Arms Have Been
From The Beginning Habitually Without Covering, Cease To Be Conscious
That The Exposed Surfaces Are Cold; Just As By Use We Have All Ceased To
Be Conscious That Our Faces Are Cold, Even When Out Of Doors. But Though
In Such Children The Sensations No Longer Protest, It Does Not Follow
That The System Escapes Injury, Any More Than It Follows That The
Fuegian Is Undamaged By Exposure, Because He Bears With Indifference The
Melting Of The Falling Snow On His Naked Body.
[7] We Are Not Certain That The Propagation Of Subdued Forms Of
Constitutional Disease Through The Agency Of Vaccination Is Not A Part
Cause. Sundry Facts In Pathology Suggest The Inference, That When The
System Of A Vaccinated Child Is Excreting The Vaccine Virus By Means Of
Pustules, It Will Tend Also To Excrete Through Such Pustules Other
Morbific Matters; Especially If These Morbific Matters Are Of A Kind
Ordinarily Got Rid Of By The Skin, As Are Some Of The Worst Of Them.
Hence It Is Very Possible--Probable Even--That A Child With A
Constitutional Taint, Too Slight To Show Itself In Visible Disease, May,
Through The Medium Of Vitiated Vaccine Lymph Taken From It, Convey A
Like Constitutional Taint To Other Children, And These To Others.
[8] _Cyclopædia Of Practical Medicine_, Vol. I. Pp. 697, 698.
Part 2 Chapter 1 (Progress Its Law And Cause) Pg 64
The Current Conception Of Progress Is Somewhat Shifting And Indefinite.
Sometimes It Comprehends Little More Than Simple Growth--As Of A Nation
In The Number Of Its Members And The Extent Of Territory Over Which It
Has Spread. Sometimes It Has Reference To Quantity Of Material
Products--As When The Advance Of Agriculture And Manufactures Is The
Topic. Sometimes The Superior Quality Of These Products Is Contemplated:
And Sometimes The New Or Improved Appliances By Which They Are Produced.
When, Again, We Speak Of Moral Or Intellectual Progress, We Refer To The
State Of The Individual Or People Exhibiting It; While, When The
Progress Of Knowledge, Of Science, Of Art, Is Commented Upon, We Have In
View Certain Abstract Results Of Human Thought And Action. Not Only,
However, Is The Current Conception Of Progress More Or Less Vague, But
It Is In Great Measure Erroneous. It Takes In Not So Much The Reality Of
Progress As Its Accompaniments--Not So Much The Substance As The Shadow.
That Progress In Intelligence Seen During The Growth Of The Child Into
The Man, Or The
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