A TEMPLE OF INDUSTRIOUS PEACE 107 intense earnestness and intellectual aspiration some tendency to beget among his elder pupils self-consciousness and a too pronounced scorn for what satisfies commonplace people. But, after all, this danger, though a real one, is not that from which English society and English boyhood are likely to suffer much. Most of the faults and shortcomings of the British "barbarian" lie in the opposite direction. And an infusion into our social system of a few men with high and even impossible ideals, and with too much earnestness, may well be borne by John Bull without much complaining or loss. It may be said generally that Arnold's conception of a school was that it should be first of all a place for the formation of character, and next a place for learning and study, as a means for the attainment of this higher end. Discipline and guidance were in his view still more prominently the business of a schoolmaster than the communication of knowledge. The motives he sought to develop and strengthen were the love of righteousness, the admiration of valour, genius, and patriotism, the sense of duty to others. and the scorn of what was little, untruthful, mean, or base in daily action. But the main condition on which the incidental attainment of this object was possible was that the community should be au fond pervaded with the spirit of work, and that the proper business of a good school, the production of exact and accomplished scholars, should be thoroughly well fulfilled. Thomas Carlyle, who stayed a week at Rugby, characterized the school as a "temple of industrious peace." This would hardly be an accurate description of a modern public school in which boat races and football matches are the prominent topics of discussion and furnish the chief fields of ambition. One of the most distinguished of Arnold's successors in the head-mastership of Rugby, Dr. Percival, now the Lord Bishop of Hereford, in writing to me has thus summarized his estimate of Arnold's school work and personal influence: "If I were called upon to express in a sentence or two my feeling in regard to Dr. Arnold's influence on school life, I should describe him as a great prophet among schoolmasters, rather than an instructor or educator in the ordinary sense of the term. Some are appointed to be prophets, and some pastors and teachers, and he was undoubtedly one of the greatest in the first of these classes. I remember asking Dean Stanley if Arnold taught them a great deal in the sixth form in the course of his lessons, and in reply to my question the Dean held up a little notebook which he happened to have in his hand at the moment, and said, 'I could put everything that Arnold ever taught me in the way of instruction into this little book.' "Thus it might fairly be said of him, as was said of a famous Oxford leader the other day, that his influence was stimulative rather than formative, the secret of his power consisting not so much in the novelty of his ideas or methods, as in his commanding and magnetic personality, and the intensity and earnestness ARNOLD A PROPHET 109 with which he impressed his views, and made them— as a prophet makes his message-a part of the living forces of the time. "The dominating idea of his Rugby life was that a head master is called of God to make his school a Christian school, an idea which has no doubt been enthroned in the hearts of multitudes of other schoolmasters, both before and since; but he was destined. to make it a new power in the world through the intensity with which he nursed it as a prophetic inspiration, and preached it in all his words and works with a prophetic fervour. This idea pervades not only his chapel sermons, but all the activities of his life. In his lessons, his study of history, his discipline, his exhortations addressed to the sixth form, and to the whole school, and his dealings with individual boys, he is felt to be always striving to infuse into the common life his own enthusiasm of Christian earnestness, and to stimulate the growth of public spirit, moral thoughtfulness, and what we sum up as Christian character. "Such, I take it, is the best part of the inheritance we owe to him, as it is the food and sustenance of all our highest hopes for the future of English schools." CHAPTER VI Arnold's extra-scholastic interests - Why such interests are necessary for a teacher - Foreign travel-Extracts from diaryLove of Nature - Intercourse with the poor needed by himself and by his pupils - University settlements and mission work in connexion with public schools - Politics - The Reform Bill – The Englishman's Register - The society for the diffusion of useful knowledge - Mechanics' Institutes The London University Arnold's attitude towards each of these enterprises It is impossible for readers to understand the true significance of a life or to estimate the value of a man's work without taking into account the pursuits and tastes which have lain outside of his professional duties. It is a familiar truism that we come into the world not only to get a living but to live; and that the life we live depends as much upon the tastes we form, the number and variety of the interests which appeal to us, as upon the manner in which our definite and ostensible work is done. A life wholly devoted to professional duty is necessarily an incomplete life. That duty can only be seen in its true proportions, can, in fact, only be properly discharged at all when its relation to the larger interests which lie outside of it is clearly perceived. This is true of all human employments. But it is especially true in regard to the office of a teacher. There is an inevitable closeness in the intellectual atmosphere of a EXTRA-SCHOLASTIC INTERESTS 111 schoolroom, and the best teachers are precisely those who are most conscious of the need of some sphere of activity beyond its walls. Nothing serves so well to keep the life of a schoolmaster sweet and wholesome as a love for some study or employment which he pursues for its own sake, and which has no immediate and visible relation to the routine of teaching or to the passing of examinations. Pedantry and donnishness, the characteristic faults of the teacher's calling, are wont to be encouraged by the constant exercise of authority in a little world composed entirely of his intellectual inferiors, by the habitual use of the imperative mood, and by an exclusive, albeit conscientious, absorption in scholastic functions. We all need, if we would see our work in true perspective, a vivid sense of the richness and spaciousness of the world outside and some contact with its greater interests, especially those which touch most nearly the borderland of our own profession and home. And we can never understand Arnold's educational work unless we enquire how he employed his leisure, and what were his relations to the larger world of thought and action, of which, after all, a school is only a part. Arnold was very conscious of the limitations which his profession imposed, and of the danger of sinking to the rank of a mere dominie. And he found the needful expansion in more directions than one. Foreign travel was to him one of the most effective and the most delightful expedients for correcting the tendency to professional narrowness and pedantry. He felt refreshed and invigorated by it. |