CHAPTER IV

Language as a discipline contrasted with natural science - Knowledge of physical facts not the only science-History-Relation of Ancient and Modern History - Its claims as a school subject — Training for citizenship—Example of a school exercise· Niebuhr's researches in Roman History - Arnold's own treatment of the regal period of Rome- His love of history infectious - Geography - Thoroughness in teaching Qualifications of assistants School organization - Relation of a head master to governing body

It will thus be seen that Arnold was a faithful representative and successor of the school of educational theorists who place the "humanities" in the foremost place as the staple of liberal culture. He may be said to belong to the pre-scientific era of educational history. Had he lived to know of the marvellous extension of physical science which has characterized the subsequent half-century, had he followed the researches of Huxley and Darwin and Lockyer and Lyell, and recognized the skill with which the forces of nature have been investigated and turned to account in enlarging the resources of human life and happiness, he might in all probability have revised his plans and seen the wisdom of recognizing the claims of natural knowledge as an integral part of a scheme of liberal education. He was too well acquainted with the Novum Organum, and with the spirit of its illustrious author, to disregard the new and beautiful knowledge which such studies as

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biology, chemistry, and zoology have of late brought to light. But it may well be doubted whether he would ever have regarded any acquaintance with the material forces of nature as good substitutes for the intellectual culture derived from classical studies, or as equal to them in disciplinal value. It is certain that he would have rebelled against the view put forth by Herbert Spencer in his famous essay, "What knowledge is of most worth?" In particular he would have been unwilling to admit the claims of the physicists to appropriate the name of "science" to their own special department of human learning. Science, in its true sense, connotes organized systematic knowledge, as distinguished from the knowledge of disjointed and unrelated facts. It implies insight into reasons, causes, consequences. It is not specially concerned with one class of phenomena, nor with one subject of investigation, but pertains alike to all branches of knowledge if treated in a philosophic spirit. The nature and significance of the Greek aorist, or the laws of the syllogism, belong as truly to the domain of science as the precession of the equinoxes, or the superposition of strata. It is just as possible to teach grammar and philology in a scientific way as it is to treat biology or the theory of refraction in an unscientific way. Even in an elementary school, the teacher who makes clear the distinction between the subject and the predicate, or between the essential and the non-essential parts of a sentence, is as truly a teacher of science as he who explains why the water boils, or what are

the respective functions of the heart and lungs. Our popular conceptions of the relative value of different departments of human knowledge will become clearer when the honoured name of "science" shall have come to be understood to imply rather a sound method of investigating truth than the particular kind of truth which is subject to investigation.

For the present, however, it will suffice to say that "science," in the restricted sense in which we are accustomed to use it of late, hardly came into the Rugby scheme at all. But language, though the centre of that scheme, was not the exclusive subject of instruction. Auxiliary to it, and necessary to give organic unity to the whole plan, were history, geography, divinity, ethical and political science. And of these, history took the foremost place.

The educational value of history, whether ancient or modern, considered as a formative study and a legitimate part of academic discipline, has been much discussed by teachers and theorists. On the one hand, it is contended that the material is unsuited for the purpose of such discipline; that the facts with which it deals are inexact, unverified, and often incapable of verification, and that the sureness and precision which should characterize all scholarship are unattainable in history. And it is often further contended that the subject should not be recognized in the curriculum of a school or a university at all, but should be left for the voluntary reading of the learner. On the other hand, there are those who see in the record of past events, and in the accumulated

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experience of mankind, the most awakening form of intellectual exercise, the best training for citizenship, and some of the profoundest and most potent truths, in their bearing on human conduct and on the formation of character. Arnold had no misgivings as to the side of the controversy on which he should range himself. Coleridge once complained that the lessons of history failed to teach us as they might, because the light which experience gives is little more to us than a lantern on the stern of a ship, which illuminates only the waves that are behind us. It was precisely against this mistake that Arnold's whole teaching was a practical protest. Freeman's dictum that "History is past politics, and politics present history," was well illustrated in the Rugby lessons. The life of the Commonwealth was to him the main subject of history; the laws of political science, the main lesson of history; the desire of taking an active share in the great work of government, the highest earthly desire of the ripened mind.1 In the interesting Excursus to be found appended to his edition of Thucydides, abundant evidence may be seen of the keen interest Arnold felt in tracing the analogies between ancient and modern history, and of his desire to obtain light from the polity and social life of the Greeks and to cast it upon some of the complex political problems of our own time.

1 See the Appendix to the first volume of Thucydides. The whole discussion as to the functions and influence of the Túpavvo and the relation between the aristocracy and the people, is very charac teristic of the spirit in which Arnold gave historical lessons.

His pupils say that he was singularly successful in connecting the events recorded by Thucydides and Tacitus with parallel incidents in modern history. A discussion on the Tepíoiko of Athens - not exactly citizens, nor yet slaves-leads him to a comparison with the burghers of Augsburg, or with the unenfranchised commons of England. The steps by which the aristocracy of blood becomes in time overthrown by the aristocracy of wealth, and by which both may be in time superseded by the ascendency of mere numbers, he would illustrate in such a way as to show the fundamental likeness between some of the social and political problems of antiquity and those of our own day. Ancient and modern, he always contended, were misleading terms. For there was an ancient and a modern period in the history of every people. "And a large portion of that history which we are wont to call ancient, the later history of the Greek republics and that of the period of the Roman Empire, is practically modern,- much more modern, say, than the age of Alfred, as it describes society in a stage analogous to that which we have now reached in the history of England."1

This view of the essentially modern character of much of what is called ancient history, and of the practical identity of many of the social and political problems which present themselves for solution in different ages, is so important and so characteristic of Arnold's method that it needs to be more fully vindicated in his own words.

1 Stanley, Chap. IV.