Practical Education, Volume II

CHAPTER XXIV

Voltaire says, that the king of Prussia always wrote with one kind of enthusiasm, and acted with another. It often happens, that men judge with one degree of understanding, and conduct themselves with another;96 hence the common-place remarks on the difference between theory and practice; hence the observation, that it is easy to be prudent for other people, but extremely difficult to be prudent for ourselves. Prudence is a virtue compounded of judgment and resolution: we do not here speak of that narrow species of prudence, which is more properly called worldly wisdom; but we mean that enlarged, comprehensive wisdom, which, after taking a calm view of the objects of happiness, steadily prefers the greatest portion of felicity. This is not a selfish virtue; for, according to our definition, benevolence, as one of the greatest sources of our pleasures, must be included in the truly prudent man's estimate. Two things are necessary to make any person prudent, the power to judge, and the habit of acting in consequence of his conviction. We have, in the preceding chapter, as far as we were able, suggested the best methods of cultivating the powers of reasoning in our pupils; we must consider now how these can be applied immediately to their conduct, and associated with habits of action.

Instead of deciding always for our young pupils, we should early accustom them to choose for themselves about every trifle which is interesting to childhood: if they choose wisely, they should enjoy the natural reward of their prudence; and if they decide rashly, they should be suffered to feel the consequence of their own errour. Experience, it is said, makes even fools wise; and the sooner we can give experience, the sooner we shall teach wisdom. But we must not substitute belief upon trust for belief upon conviction. When a little boy says, "I did not eat any more custard, because mamma told me that the custard would make me sick," he is only obedient, he is not prudent; he submits to his mother's judgment, he does not use his own. When obedience is out of the question, children sometimes follow the opinions of others; of this we formerly gave an instance (v. Toys) in the poor boy, who chose a gilt coach, because his mamma "and every body said it was the prettiest," whilst he really preferred the useful cart: we should never prejudice them either by our wisdom or our folly.

A sensible little boy of four years old had seen somebody telling fortunes in the grounds of coffee; but when he had a cup of coffee given to him, he drank it all, saying, "Coffee is better than fortune!"

When their attention is not turned to divine what the spectators think and feel, children will have leisure to consult their own minds, and to compare their own feelings. As this has been already spoken of,97 we shall not dwell upon it; we only mention it as a necessary precaution in teaching prudence.

Some parents may perhaps fear, that, if they were to allow children to choose upon every trifling occasion for themselves, they would become wilful and troublesome: this certainly will be the effect, if we make them think that there is a pleasure in the exercise of free-will, independently of any good that may be obtained by judicious choice. "Now, my dear, you shall have your choice! You shall choose for yourself! You shall have your free choice!" are expressions that may be pronounced in such a tone, and with such an emphasis to a child, as immediately to excite a species of triumphant ecstasy from the mere idea of having his own free choice. By a different accent and emphasis we may repress the ideas of triumph, and, without intimidating the pupil, we may turn his mind to the difficulties, rather than the glory of being in a situation to decide for himself.

We must not be surprised at the early imprudence of children; their mistakes, when they first are allowed to make a choice, are inevitable; all their sensations are new to them, consequently they cannot judge of what they shall like or dislike. If some of Lord Macartney's suite had, on his return from the late embassy to China, brought home some plant whose smell was perfectly unknown to Europeans, would it have been possible for the greatest philosopher in England to have decided, if he had been asked, whether he should like the unknown perfume? Children, for the first five or six years of their lives, are in the situation of this philosopher, relatively to external objects. We should never reproachfully say to a child, "You asked to smell such a thing; you asked to see such a thing; and now you have had your wish, you don't like them!" How can the child possibly judge of what he shall like or dislike, before he has tried? Let him try experiments upon his own feelings; the more accurate knowledge he acquires, the sooner he will be enabled to choose prudently. You may expedite his progress by exciting him to compare each new sensation with those to which he is already familiarized; this will counteract that love of novelty which is often found dangerous to prudence; if the mind is employed in comparing, it cannot be dazzled by new objects.

Children often imagine, that what they like for the present minute, they shall continue to like for ever; they have not learnt from experiment, that the most agreeable sensations fatigue, if they are prolonged or frequently repeated; they have not learnt, that all violent stimuli are followed by weariness or ennui. The sensible preceptor will not insist upon his pupil's knowing these things by inspiration, nor will he expect that his assertions or prophecies should be implicitly believed; he will wait till the child feels, and at that moment he will excite his pupil to observe his own feelings. "You thought that you should never be tired of smelling that rose, or of looking at that picture; now you perceive that you are tired: remember this; it may be of use to you another time." If this be said in a friendly manner, it will not pique the child to defend his past choice, but it will direct his future judgment.

Young people are often reproached for their imprudence in preferring a small present pleasure to a large distant advantage: this errour also arises from inexperience, not from want of judgment, or deficiency in strength of mind. When that which has been the future, has in its turn become present, children begin to have some idea of the nature of time, and they can then form some comparisons between the value of present and future pleasures. This is a very slow process; old people calculate and depend upon the distant future more than the young, not always from their increased wisdom or prudence, but merely from their increased experience, and consequent belief that the future will in time arrive. It is imprudent in old people to depend upon the future; if they were to reason upon the chance of their lives, they ought not to be secure of its arrival; yet habit in this instance, as in many others, is more powerful than reason: in all the plans of elderly people, there is seldom any errour from impatience as to the future; there often appear gross errours in their security as to its arrival. If these opposite habits could be mixed in the minds of the old and of the young, it would be for their mutual advantage.

It is not possible to infuse experience into the mind; our pupils must feel for themselves: but, by teaching them to observe their own feelings, we may abridge their labour; a few lessons will teach a great deal when they are properly applied. To teach children to calculate and compare their present and future pleasures, we may begin by fixing short intervals of time for our experiments; an hour, a day, a week, perhaps, are periods of time to which their imagination will easily extend; they can measure and compare their feelings within these spaces of time, and we may lead them to observe their own errours in not providing for the future. "Now Friday is come; last Monday you thought Friday would never come. If you had not cut away all your pencil last week, you would have had some left to draw with to-day. Another time you will manage better."

We should also lead them to compare their ideas of any given pleasure, before and after the period of its arrival. "You thought last summer that you should like making snow balls in winter, better than making hay in summer. Now you have made snow-balls to-day; and you remember what you felt when you were making hay last summer; do you like the snow-ball pleasure, or the hay-making pleasure the best?" V. Berquin's Quatre saisons.

If our pupils, when they have any choice to make, prefer a small present gratification to a great future pleasure, we should not, at the moment of their decision, reproach their imprudence, but we should steadily make them abide by their choice; and when the time arrives at which the greater pleasure might have been enjoyed, we should remark the circumstance, but not with a tone of reproach, for it is their affair, not ours. "You preferred having a sheet of paper the moment you wanted it last week, to the having a quire of paper this week." "Oh, but," says the child, "I wanted a sheet of paper very much then, but I did not consider how soon this week would come – I wish I had chosen the quire." "Then remember what you feel now, and you will be able to choose better upon another occasion." We should always refer to the pupils' own feelings, and look forward to their future advantage. The reason why so few young people attend to advice, is, that their preceptors do not bring it actually home to their feelings: it is useless to reproach for past imprudence; the child sees the errour as plainly as we do; all that can be done, is to make it a lesson for the future.

To a geometrician, the words by proposition 1st. stand for a whole demonstration: if he recollects that he has once gone over the demonstration, he is satisfied of its truth; and, without verifying it again, he makes use of it in making out the demonstration of a new proposition. In moral reasoning, we proceed in the same manner; we recollect the result of our past experiments, and we refer to this moral demonstration in solving a new problem. In time, by frequent practice, this operation is performed so rapidly by the mind, that we scarcely perceive it, and yet it guides our actions. A man, in walking across the room, keeps out of the way of the tables and chairs, without perceiving that he reasons about the matter; a sober man avoids hard drinking, because he knows it to be hurtful to his health; but he does not, every time he refuses to drink, go over the whole train of reasoning which first decided his determination. A modern philosopher,98 calls this rapid species of reasoning "intuitive analogy;" applied to the business of life, the French call it tact. Sensible people have this tact in higher perfection than others; and prudent people govern themselves by it more regularly than others. By the methods which we have recommended, we hope it may be successfully cultivated in early education.

Rousseau, in expressing his contempt for those who make habit their only guide of action, goes, as he is apt to do in the heat of declamation, into the errour opposite to that which he ridicules. "The only habit," cries he, "that I wish my Emilius to have, is the habit of having no habits." Emilius would have been a strange being, had he literally accomplished his preceptor's wish. To go up stairs, would have been a most operose, and to go down stairs, a most tremendous, affair to Emilius, for he was to have no habits: between every step of the stairs, new deliberations must take place, and fresh decisions of the judgment and will ensue. In his moral judgments, Emilius would have had as much useless labour. Habit surely is necessary, even to those who make reason the ultimate judge of their affairs. Reason is not to be appealed to upon every trivial occasion, to rejudge the same cause a million of times. Must a man, every time he draws a straight line, repeat to himself, "a right line is that which lieth evenly between its points?" Must he rehearse the propositions of Euclid, instead of availing himself of their practical use?

"Christian, can'st thou raise a perpendicular upon a straight line?" is the apostrophe with which the cross-legged emperor of Barbary, seated on his throne of rough deal boards, accosts every learned stranger who frequents his court. In the course of his reign, probably, his Barbaric majesty may have reiterated the demonstration of this favourite proposition, which he learned from a French surgeon about five hundred times; but his majesty's understanding is not materially improved by these recitals; his geometrical learning is confined, we are told, to this single proposition.

It would have been scarcely worth while to have singled out for combat this paradox of Rousseau's, concerning habit, if it had not presented itself in the formidable form of an antithesis. A false maxim, conveyed in an antithesis, is dangerous, because it is easily remembered and repeated, and it quickly passes current in conversation.

But to return to our subject, of which we have imprudently lost sight. Imprudence does not always arise from our neglect of our past experience, or from our forgetting to take the future into our calculations, but from false associations, or from passion. Objects often appear different to one man, from what they do to the rest of the world: this man may reason well upon what the majority of reasonable people agree to call false appearances; he may follow strictly the conviction of his own understanding, and yet the world will say that he acts very imprudently. To the taste or smell of those who are in a fever, objects not only appear, but really are, to the patients different from what they appear to persons in sound health: in the same manner to the imagination, objects have really a different value in moments of enthusiasm, from what they have in our cooler hours, and we scarcely can believe that our view of objects will ever vary. It is in vain to oppose reason to false associations; we must endeavour to combat one set of associations by another, and to alter the situation, and consequently, the views,99 of the mistaken person. Suppose, for instance, that a child had been in a coach and six upon some pleasant excursion (it is an improbable thing, but we may suppose any thing:) suppose a child had enjoyed, from some accidental circumstances, an extraordinary degree of pleasure in a coach and six, he might afterwards long to be in a similar vehicle, from a mistaken notion, that it could confer happiness. Here we should not oppose the force of reasoning to a false association, but we should counteract the former association. Give the child an equal quantity of amusement when he is not in a coach and six, and then he will form fresh pleasurable associations with other objects which may balance his first prepossession. If you oppose reason ineffectually to passion or taste, you bring the voice and power of reason into discredit with your pupil. When you have changed his view of things, you may then reason with him, and show him the cause of his former mistake.

In the excellent fable of the shield that was gold on one side and silver on the other, the two disputants never could have agreed until they changed places. – When you have, in several instances, proved by experiment, that you judge more prudently than your pupil, he will be strongly inclined to listen to your counsels, and then your experience will be of real use to him; he will argue from it with safety and satisfaction. When, after recovering from fits of passion or enthusiasm, you have, upon several occasions, convinced him that your admonitions would have prevented him from the pain of repentance, he will recollect this when he again feels the first rise of passion in his mind; and he may, in that lucid moment, avail himself of your calm reason, and thus avoid the excesses of extravagant passions. That unfortunate French monarch,100 who was liable to temporary fits of frenzy, learned to foresee his approaching malady, and often requested his friends to disarm him, lest he should injure any of his attendants.

In a malady which precludes the use of reason, it was possible for this humane patient to foresee the probable mischief he might do to his fellow-creatures, and to take prudent measures against his own violence; and may not we expect, that those who are early accustomed to attend to their own feelings, may prepare against the extravagance of their own passions, and avail themselves of the regulating advice of their temperate friends?

In the education of girls, we must teach them much more caution than is necessary to boys: their prudence must be more the result of reasoning than of experiment; they must trust to the experience of others; they cannot always have recourse to what ought to be; they must adapt themselves to what is. They cannot rectify the material mistakes in their conduct,101 Timidity, a certain tardiness of decision, and reluctance to act in public situations, are not considered as defects in a woman's character: her pausing prudence does not, to a man of discernment, denote imbecility; but appears to him the graceful, auspicious characteristic of female virtue. There is always more probability that women should endanger their own happiness by precipitation, than by forbearance. – Promptitude of choice, is seldom expected from the female sex; they should avail themselves of the leisure that is permitted to them for reflection. "Begin nothing of which you have not well considered the end," was the piece of advice for which the Eastern Sultan102 paid a purse of gold, the price set upon it by a sage. The monarch did not repent of his purchase. This maxim should be engraved upon the memory of our female pupils, by the repeated lessons of education. We should, even in trifles, avoid every circumstance which can tend to make girls venturesome; which can encourage them to trust their good fortune, instead of relying on their own prudence. Marmontel's tale, entitled "Heureusement," is a witty, but surely not a moral, tale. Girls should be discouraged from hazarding opinions in general conversation; but amongst their friends, they should be excited to reason with accuracy and with temper.103 It is really a part of a woman's prudence to have command of temper; if she has it not, her wit and sense will not have their just value in domestic life. Calphurnia, a Roman lady, used to plead her own causes before the senate, and we are informed, that she became "so troublesome and confident, that the judges decreed that thenceforward no woman should be suffered to plead." Did not this lady make an imprudent use of her talents?

In the choice of friends, and on all matters of taste, young women should be excited to reason about their own feelings. "There is no reasoning about taste," is a pernicious maxim: if there were more reasoning, there would be less disputation upon this subject. If women questioned their own minds, or allowed their friends to question them, concerning the reasons of their "preferences and aversions," there would not, probably, be so many love matches, and so few love marriages. It is in vain to expect, that young women should begin to reason miraculously at the very moment that reason is wanted in the guidance of their conduct. We should also observe, that women are called upon for the exertion of their prudence at an age when young men are scarcely supposed to possess that virtue; therefore, women should be more early, and more carefully, educated for the purpose. The important decisions of woman's life, are often made before she is twenty: a man does not come upon the theatre of public life, where most of his prudence is shown, till he is much older.