Practical Education. Maria Edgeworth
with the same quantity of attention, learns, perhaps, a hundred times as much in the same time, as he could acquire under the tuition of a learned preceptor ignorant in the art of teaching.
The analytic and synthetic methods of instruction will both be found useful when judiciously employed. Where the enumeration of particulars fatigues the attention, we should, in teaching any science, begin by stating the general principles, and afterwards produce only the facts essential to their illustration and proof. But wherever we have not accumulated a sufficient number of facts to be accurately certain of any general principle, we must, however tedious the task, enumerate all the facts that are known, and warn the pupil of the imperfect state of the science. All the facts must, in this case, be stored up with scrupulous accuracy; we cannot determine which are unimportant, and which may prove essentially useful: this can be decided only by future experiments. By thus stating honestly to our pupils the extent of our ignorance, as well as the extent of our knowledge; by thus directing attention to the imperfections of science, rather than to the study of theories, we shall avoid the just reproaches which have been thrown upon the dogmatic vanity of learned preceptors.
"For as knowledges are now," says Bacon, "there is a kind of contract of errour between the deliverer and receiver; for he that delivereth knowledge, desireth to deliver it in such a form as may be best believed, and not as may be best examined; and he that receiveth knowledge, desireth rather present satisfaction than expectant inquiry; and so rather not to doubt, than not to err; glory making the author not to lay open his weakness, and sloth making the disciple not to know his strength."[32]
[13] V. Preface to Berthollet's Chemical Nomenclature.
[14] V. Condillac's "Art de Penser."
[15] Major Cartwright. See his Journal, &c.
[16] V. Chapter on Mechanics.
[17] V. Adela and Theodore.
[18] Chapter on Tasks.
[19] Zoonomia, vol. i. page 435.
[20] Cicero.
[21] Lucian.
[22] "And lends his little soul at every stroke." Virg.
[23] V. Chapter II. on Tasks.
[24] Apercues.
[25] Deinology.
[26] V. Condillac Art de Penser.
[27] Mr. Owen.
[28] Mr. Erskine—The Star.
[29] V. Life of John Elwes, Esq. by T. Topham.
[30] V. Chapter on Toys.
[31] Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 21, 24.
[32] Bacon, vol. i. page 84.
CHAPTER IV.
SERVANTS
"Now, master,"[33] said a fond nurse to her favourite boy, after having given him sugared bread and butter for supper, "now, master, kiss me; wipe your mouth, dear, and go up to the drawing room to mamma; and when mistress asks you what you have had for supper, you'll say, bread and butter, for you have had bread and butter, you know, master." "And sugar," said the boy; "I must say bread and butter and sugar, you know."
How few children would have had the courage to have added, "and sugar!" How dangerous it is to expose them to such temptations! The boy must have immediately perceived the object of his nurse's casuistry. He must guess that she would be blamed for the addition of the sugar, else why should she wish to suppress the word? His gratitude is engaged to his nurse for running this risk to indulge him; his mother, by the force of contrast, appears a severe person, who, for no reason that he can comprehend, would deprive him of the innocent pleasure of eating sugar. As to its making him sick, he has eat it, and he is not sick; as to its spoiling his teeth, he does not care about his teeth, and he sees no immediate change in them: therefore he concludes that his mother's orders are capricious, and that his nurse loves him better because she gives him the most pleasure. His honour and affection towards his nurse, are immediately set in opposition to his duty to his mother. What a hopeful beginning in education! What a number of dangerous ideas may be given by a single word!
The taste for sugared bread and butter is soon over; but servants have it in their power to excite other tastes with premature and factitious enthusiasm. The waiting-maid, a taste for dress; the footman, a taste for gaming; the coachman and groom, for horses and equipage; and the butler, for wine. The simplicity of children is not a defence to them; and though they are totally ignorant of vice, they are exposed to adopt the principles of those with whom they live, even before they can apply them to their own conduct.
The young son of a lady of quality, a boy of six or seven years old, addressed, with great simplicity, the following speech to a lady who visited his mother.
Boy. Miss N——, I wish you could find somebody, when you go to London, who would keep you. It's a very good thing to be kept.
Lady. What do you mean, my dear?
Boy. Why it's when—you know, when a person's kept, they have every thing found for them; their friend saves them all trouble, you know. They have a carriage and diamonds, and every thing they want. I wish somebody would keep you.
Lady, laughing. But I'm afraid nobody would. Do you think any body would?
Boy, after a pause. Why yes, I think Sir——, naming a gentleman whose name had, at this time, been much talked of in a public trial, would be as likely as any body.
The same boy talked familiarly of phætons and gigs, and wished that he was grown up, that he might drive four horses in hand. It is obvious that these ideas were put into the boy's head by the servants with whom he associated.
Without supposing them to be profligate, servants, from their situation, from all that they see of the society of their superiors, and from the early prejudices of their own education, learn to admire that wealth and rank to which they are bound to pay homage. The luxuries and follies of fashionable life they mistake for happiness;