209. Some Thoughts on Education (1693). ВЂ” The book

which he published towards the close of his life, under the

modest title Some Thoughts concerning Education, was the

summing up of a long experience. A studious pupil at

Westminster, he conceived from his early years, as Descartes

did at La Fleche, a keen sense of repugnance for a purely

formal classical instruction, and for language studies in gen-

end, in which, nevertheless, he attained distinction. A

model student at the University of Oxford, he there became

an accomplished humanist, notwithstanding the practical and

positive tendency of his mind that was already drawn to-

wards the natural sciences and researches in physics and in

medicine. Made Bachelor of Arts in 1656, and Master of Arts

in 1658, he passed directly from the student's bench to the

professor's chair. He was successively lecturer and tutor in

Greek, but this did not prevent him later from eliminating

Hellenism almost completely from his scheme of liberal educa-

tion. Then he became lecturer on rhetoric, and finally on

moral philosophy. When, in 1666, he discontinued his schol-

astic life to mingle in political and diplomatic affairs, he at

least carried from his studious residence at Oxford, the germ^

of the most of his ideas on education. He sought occasion to

make an application of them in the education of private indi-

viduals, of whom he Mas the inspirer and counsellor, if not the

official director. In the families of friends and hosts that he

frequented, for example, in thai of Lord Shaftesbury, he made

a close study of children ; and it is in studying them, and in

following with a sagacious eye the successive steps *>( their

improvement in disposition ami mind, that he succeeded in

196 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

acquiring that educational experience which has left a trace

on each page of the Thoughts concerning Education. This

book, in fact, is the issue of one of Locke's experiences as an

assistant in the education of the children of his friends.

Towards the year 1684-6, he addressed to his friend Clarke

a series of letters which, retouched and slightly modified,

have become a classical work, simple and familiar in style, a

little disconnected, perhaps, and abounding in repetitions,

but the substance of which is excellent, and the ideas as

remarkable, in general, for their originality as for their just-

ness. Translated into French in 1695 by P. Coste, and re-

printed several times in the lifetime of their author, the

Thoughts concerning Education have had a universal success.

They have exercised an undoubted influence on the educa-

tional writings of Rousseau and Helvetius. They have

received the enthusiastic praise of Leibnitz, who placed this

work above that on the Human Understanding. " I am

persuaded," said H. Marion recently, in his interesting study

on Locke, " that if an edition of the Thoughts were to be

published to-day in a separate volume, it would have a

marked success." l

210. Analysis of the Thoughts concerning Educa-

tion. — Without pretending to give in this place a detailed

analysis of Locke's book, which deserves to be read entire,

and which discusses exhaustively or calls to notice, one after

another, almost all important educational questions, we shall

attempt to make known the essential principles which are to

be drawn from it. These are : 1. in physical education, the

hardening process; 2. in intellectual education, practical

utility ; 3. in moral education, the principle of honor, set up

as a rule for the free self-government of man.

1 John Locke. His Life and his Work. Paris, 1878.

r 1 "

PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 19?

211. Physical Education; The Hardening Process. -

The ideal of education, according to Locke, is "a sound

mind in a sound body." A physician like Rabelais, the

author of the Thoughts concerning Education had special

competence in questions of physical education. But a love

for the paradoxical, and an excessive tendency towards the

hardening of the body, have marred, on this point, the re-

flections of the English philosopher. He has summed up

his precepts on this subject in the following lines : —

" The whole is reduced," he says, " to a small number of

rules, easy to observe ; much air, exercise, and sleep ; a

simple diet, no wine or strong liquors ; little or no medicine

at all ; garments that are neither too tight nor too warm ;

finally, and above all, the habit of keeping the head and feet

cold, of often bathing the feet in cold water and exposing

them to dampness." 1 But it is necessary to enter some-

what into details, and to examine closely some of these

ideas.

Locke is the first educator to write a consecutive and

methodical dissertation on the food, clothing, and sleep of

children. It is he who has stated this principle, afterwards

taken up by Rousseau : '• Leave to nature the care of form-

ing the body as she thinks it ought to be done." Hence, no

close-fitting garments, life in the open air and in the sun ;

children brought up like peasants, inured to heat and cold.

playing with head and feet bare. In the matter of food,

Locke forbids sugar, wine, spices, and flesh, up to the age

of three or four. As to fruits, which children often crave

with an inordinate appetite, a fact that is not surprising, he

pleasantly remarks, •• since it was for an apple that our first

parents lost paradise," he makes a singular choice. He

^■'Thoughts, translation by G. Compayr€, p. 57.

198 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

authorizes strawberries, gooseberries, apples, and pears ; but

he interdicts peaches, plums, and grapes. To excuse Locke's

prejudice against the grapes, it must be recollected that he

lived in England, a country in which the vine grows with

difficulty, and of which an Italian said, "The only ripe fruit I

have seen in England is a baked apple." As to meals,

Locke does not think it important to fix them at stated hours.

F^nelon, on the contrary, more judiciously requires that the

hour for repasts be absolutely determined. But this is not

the only instance in which Locke's wisdom is at fault.

What shall be said of that hygienic fancy which consists in

allowing the child " to have his shoes so thin, that they

might leak and let in water, whenever he comes near it " ?

It is certain that Locke treats children with an unheard-of

severity, all the more surprising in the case of one who had

an infirm and delicate constitution that could be kept in

repair only through precaution and management. I do not

know whether the consequences of the treatment which he

proposes, applied to the letter, might not be disastrous.

Madame de S6vigne" was more nearly right when she wrote :

" If your son is very robust, a rude education is good ; but

if he is delicate, T think that in your attempts to make him

robust, 3^ou would kill him." The body, says Locke, may be

accustomed to everything. We ma}' reply to this by quoting

an anecdote of Peter the Great, who one day took it into his

head, it is said, that it would be best for all the sailors to

form the habit of drinking salt water. Immediately he pro-

mulgated an edict which ordered that all naval cadets should

henceforth drink only sea-water. The boys all died, and

there the experiment stopped.

Still, without subscribing to Locke's paradoxes, which

have found no one to approve of them except Rousseau, we

should recollect that in his precepts on physical education as

PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 199

a whole, the author of the Thoughts deserves our commenda-

tion for having recommended a manly course of discipline,

and a frugal diet, for having discarded fashionable conven-

tionalities and drawn near to nature, and for having con-

demned the refinements of an indolent mode of life, and for

being inspired by the simple and manly customs of England.

212. Moral Education. — In the thought of Locke, moral

education takes precedence of instruction properly so called :

"That which a gentleman ought to desire for his son,

besides the fortune he leaves him is, 1. virtue ; 2. prudence ;

3. good manners ; 4. instruction."

Virtue and prudence — that is, moral qualities and prac-

tical qualities — are of first consideration. "Instruction,"

says Locke again, " is but the least part of education." In

the book of Thoughts, where repetitions abound, there is

nothing more frequently repeated than the pra'ise of virtue.

Doubtless it may be thought that Locke, like Herbert

Spencer in our own day, cherishes prejudices with respect to

instruction, and that he does not take sufficient account of

the moralizing influence exercised over the heart and will by

intellectual enlightenment ; but, even with this admission, we

must thank Locke for having protested against the teachers

who think they have done all when they have embellished the

memory and developed the intelligence.

The grand thing in education is certainly to establish good

moral habits, to cultivate noble sentiments, and, finally, to

form virtuous characters.

213. Honor, the Principle op Moral Discipline. — -

But after having placed moral education in its proper rank,

which is the first, it remains to inquire what shall be the

principles and the methods of this education. Shall it be

the maxim of utility, as Rousseau requires? Must the child,

200 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

before acting, inquire what is the good of this? Cui bo?io?

No ; utilitarian in instruction and in intellectual education, as

we have just seen, Locke is not so in moral education.

Shall it be fear, shall it be the authority of the teacher or of

parents, founded on punishments, upon the slavish feeling

of terror? Still less. Locke reproves repressive discipline,

and is not inclined to chastisements. Shall it be affection,

the love of parents, the aggregate of tender sentiments?

Locke scarceby speaks of them. Of too little sensibility him-

self, he does not seem to think of all that can be done through

the sensibility of the child.

Locke, who perhaps is wrong in treating the child too

early, as though he were a man, who does not take sufficient

account of all the feebleness that is in infant nature, appeals

from the first to the sentiment of honor, and to the fear of

shame, that is, to emotions which, I fear, by their very

nobleness, are above the powers of the child. Honor, which