LETTER XVII.
The Relations of Education to Position in Life.
103.I am not quite sure that you will feel the awkwardness of the dilemma I got into at the end of last letter, as much I do myself. You working men have been crowing and peacocking at such a rate lately; and setting yourselves forth so confidently for the cream of society, and the top of the world, that perhaps you will not anticipate any of the difficulties which suggest themselves to a thorough-bred Tory and Conservative, like me. Perhaps you will expect a youth properly educated—a good rider—musician—and well-grounded scholar in natural philosophy, to think it a step of promotion when he has to go and be made a tailor of, or a coalheaver? If you do, I should very willingly admit that you might be right, and go on to the farther development of my notions without pausing at this stumbling-block, were it not that, unluckily, all the wisest men whose sayings I ever heard or read, agree in expressing (one way or another) just such contempt for those useful occupations, as I dread on the part of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakespeare and Chaucer,—Dante and Virgil,—Horace and Pindar,—Homer, Æschylus, and Plato,—all the men of any age or country who seem to have had Heaven's music on their lips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine that the feeling of prudent English-men, and sensible as well as sensitive English-women, on reading my last letter, would mostly be—"Is the man mad, or laughing at us, to propose educating the working classes this way? He could not, if his wild scheme were possible, find a better method of making them acutely wretched."
104. It may be so, my sensible and polite friends; and I am heartily willing, as well as curious, to hear you develope your own scheme of operative education, so only that it be universal, orderly, and careful. I do not say that I shall be prepared to advocate my athletics and philosophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or imply, in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You imply that a certain portion of mankind must be employed in degrading work; and that, to fit them for this work, it is necessary to limit their knowledge, their active powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood upwards, so that they may not be able to conceive of any state better than the one they were born in, nor possess any knowledge or acquirements inconsistent with the coarseness, or disturbing the monotony, of their vulgar occupation. And by their labour in this contracted state of mind, we superior beings are to be maintained; and always to be curtseyed to by the properly ignorant little girls, and capped by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by.
105. Mind, I do not say that this is not the right state of things. Only, if it be, you need not be so over-particular about the slave-trade, it seems to me. What is the use of arguing so pertinaciously that a black's skull will hold as much as a white's, when you are declaring in the same breath that a white's skull must not hold as much as it can, or it will be the worse for him? It does not appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into doing a piece of low work that I don't like; but it is a very profound state of slavery to be kept, myself, low in the forehead, that I may not dislike low work.
106. You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward one, which ever way you look at it. But, what is still worse, I am not puzzled only, at this part of my scheme, about the boys I shall have to make workmen of; I am just as much puzzled about the boys I shall have to make nothing of! Grant, that by hook or crook, by reason or rattan, I persuade a certain number of the roughest ones into some serviceable business, and get coats and shoes made for the rest,—what is the business of "the rest" to be? Naturally, according to the existing state of things, one supposes they are to belong to some of the gentlemanly professions; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers of special skill or pugnacity. All my boys will be soldiers. So far from wanting any lawyers, of the kind that live by talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall always entertain a profound respect; but when I get my athletic education fairly established, of what help to them will my respect be? They will all starve! And for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a large number of episcopates—one over every hundred families—(and many positions of civil authority also, for civil officers, above them and below), but all these places will involve much hard work, and be anything but covetable; while, of clergymen's usual work, admonition, theological demonstration, and the like, I shall want very little done indeed, and that little done for nothing! for I will allow no man to admonish anybody, until he has previously earned his own dinner by more productive work than admonition.
Well, I wish, my friend, you would write me a word or two in answer to this, telling me your own ideas as to the proper issue out of these difficulties. I should like to know what you think, and what you suppose others will think, before I tell you my own notions about the matter.