MANY of our readers doubtless remember Sylvester Graham, the great originator and expounder of the bran-bread system of diet, and his theories. They remember how eloquently he inveighed against the consumption of animal food, and how he startled all the old ladies, both male and female, throughout the length and breadth of the land, by telling them that tea was a slow poison, which would infallibly shorten their lives. It is said that one venerable old lady, who had entered upon her ninety-second year, abandoned with horror the delicious beverage, resolved never to touch “the pizen” again, lest she should not live out half her days. Many was the stout Falstaff that pined away to a skeleton under the Graham regimen. Robustious, corpulent fellows, — perfect Daniel Lamberts in ponderosity, — who had trundled along a mountain of flesh before trying a pea-soup diet, were suddenly reduced so thin as hardly to have weight enough to turn a money-scale, or opaqueness to cast a shadow. Horace Greeley came near being reduced to a “dried neat’s tongue, a mere dagger of lath,” or second Calvin Edson, by the experiment. At one time Graham had some ten thousand or more disciples in this country, who not only were the sworn foes of beef, pork and mutton, but denounced Mocha and old Government Java, scorned even Dr. Parr’s compromise concerning 118 tea, — “non possum tecum vivere, nec sine te,” — and declared, with Hood, that
“If wine is a poison, so is tea,
Only in another shape;
What matter if one die
By canister or grape?
By long searching, Graham might now, if alive, muster a baker’s dozen of followers; but probably, if they were marshaled, he would exclaim, with Falstaff, — “I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on.”
Now, just as there are Grahamites who think that, because they are virtuous, there shall be “no more cakes and ale”, — living skeletons, who
“defy
That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with minced pie, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge;
Fat ox and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.” —
so there are moral Grahamites, too. They have a certain course of mental dietetics, which they declare to be most conducive to the welfare of man, the microcosm, in his relations to the macrocosm. The moral Grahamites are the men who set their faces against the higher and more difficult branches of education taught in our colleges; who prefer the wholesome bran-bread of he practical sciences to the roast-beef and plum-pudding of scholastic lore. Give us, they say, the man who makes a new mowing-machine, or a Hobbs-defying, burglar-proof lock, harder to be opened than the riddle of the Egyptian sphinx; give us the man who can construct a tunnel under Lake Michigan, — who can build a railroad across the Rocky Mountains, or a first-rate 119 steamship. Such men are the great benefactors and movers of the world. The poet Longfellow, who makes Golden Legends; his neighbor, Winlock, who scoops up new asteroids from the depths of space; Powers, who carves statues in marble; Bierstadt, who transports us amid the marvels of the Yosemite; Whitney, who detects the affinities of remote languages, and Emerson, who cultivates divine philosophy, — find little favor with our Grahamites. Look, they say, at Pullman and his palace restaurant cars, and at Donald McKay and his big ships! Donald is the greatest man on our seaboard. And certainly, if Providence intended that shipbuilding should be the end of our creation, he would be greater than Socrates or Plato, Shakspeare or Milton, and only equaled by Vanderbilt, James Fisk, Jr., or the late filibustering, lawless George Law
But what is this “practical” education for which so many persons are clamoring? Are there any two persons among them who can agree as to what it is? If by practical education is meant that minimum of training and teaching which will just enable a man to house, clothe and feed himself, — to pay his bills and keep clear of the poorhouse, which is summed up in the three R’s, “Readin’, Ritin’ and Rithmetic,” — then we deny that such an education subserves, in the highest degree, even its own petty and selfish ends. The wretched economy which tries to sift the so-called practical from the true, the good, and the beautiful, fails to get even the good it covets. But the most popular idea of a practical education is that which regards it as a training for a particular calling or profession. Our colleges are begged to treat Smith’s son, as an incipient tape-seller, Brown’s as an undeveloped broker, 120 Thompson’s as an embryo engineer, and Jones’s as a budding attorney. Well, we admit to the fullest extent the right of Smith, Brown, Thompson, and Jones, juniors, to qualify themselves for any occupation they choose; but we deny their right to demand of the State or of our colleges a special training which shall qualify them for buying calico, building bridges, drawing declarations, or speculating in stocks. Young men demand an education which shall make them good merchants, lawyers, and carpenters; but they need first of all, and more imperiously than all things else, to be educated as men.
Of a piece of timber you may make a mast, a machine, a piano, or a pulpit; but, first of all, it must become timber, sound, solid, and well seasoned. The highest and truest education is not that which develops, trains, and strengthens this or that faculty, but that which vitalizes and stimulates all the faculties; which does for the mind what the gymnasium does for the body, — energizes it by robust and bracing exercises. Whatever does this most effectually, — whatever makes the mind of the pupil conscious of its own energies, and gives it the power of rightly using them, — is the very thing he needs, however little use he may have for it after the drill is over. The thing he is taught, — the lessons learned, — is not the end, but the means of education. There can be no greater mistake made, than to suppose that a man is losing his time, unless he is learning something which can be turned to immediate account in the calling to which he is destined. Professor Malden, in a lecture on the “Introduction of the Natural Sciences into General Education,” has so ably exposed this fallacy, that we cannot help quoting the passage. In speaking of the demand made by some parents that education should have a direct relation 121 to gainful pursuits, — that is, for example, a boy who is to spend his days among figures and calculations, in buying or in selling, in constructing engines or in navigating ships, should not “waste his time” in mastering Greek or Latin, the writer says:
“If the education of the body were the matter in question, instead of the education of the mind, the absurdity of this conduct would be abundantly manifest. Put the case of a boy of a weakly constitution and effeminate habits; and suppose that family connections and interest make it seem desirable that he should enter the army, and that he is committed to the care of some one, — an old soldier, if you like, — who professes to prepare him for his military career. At the end of four or five years, when he ought to obtain his commission, his father may think it right to inquire into his fitness for his profession. ‘Have you studied tactics?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Have you studied gunnery?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Are you perfect in the last instructions issued from the Horse Guards for the manœuvres of cavalry?’ ‘I have not seen them, sir.’ ‘Have you learned the broad-sword exercise?’ ‘No.’ ‘Can you put a company of infantry through their drill?’ ‘No.’ ‘Have you practiced platoon firing?’ ‘No.’ ‘Can you even fix a bayonet in a musket?’ ‘I have never tried, sir.’ After such an examination, we may suppose the father expostulating indignantly with the veteran under whose care his son had been placed. The latter may reply: ‘Sir, when you entrusted your son to my training, he was weak and sickly; he had little appetite, and was fastidious in his eating; he could bear no exposure to the weather; he could not walk two miles without fatigue; he was incapable of any severer exercise; he was unwilling, and indeed unable, to join in the athletic sports 122 of boys his age. Now he is in perfect health, and wants and wishes for no indulgence; he can make a hearty dinner on any wholesome food, or go without it, if need be; he will get wet through, and care nothing about it; he can walk twelve or fifteen miles a day; he can ride; he can swim; he can skate; he can play a game at cricket, and enjoy it; though he has not leant the broad-sword exercise, he fences well; though he has never handled a soldier’s musket, he is an excellent shot with a fowling-piece; he has a firm foot, a quick eye, and a steady hand; he is a very pretty draughtsman; he is eager to enter his profession; and you may take my word for it, sir, he will make a brave and active officer.’ ”
Was ever a method of training more triumphantly vindicated? The principle weapon which the veteran rests his argument is, that by his system he has invigorated the physical constitution of his pupil, and so has fitted him for any profession in which habits of activity or of endurance may be required, — a principle which is equally sound when applied to the discipline of the mind. In the ancient gymnasium, the first end sought was to produce a muscular man, an athlete. When this was accomplished, it mattered little whether he entered the lists of the wrestler, or of the boxer, or of the racer. The first and most indispensable requisite to success in any calling above that of a day-laborer, is mental vigor. A man may have a head crammed with information; he may be a walking encyclopædia of facts and opinions, of dates and statistics on this subject and that; but without intellectual force, a trained and athletic mind, he is little better than the case that contains the books from which his knowledge has been drawn. The man who has had a special training, directed with exclusive 123 reference to a particular pursuit, may be well instructed, but in no sense can he be called an educated or cultivated man. As the development of a single member or organ of the body is not true physical culture, so the inordinate development of the memory, the imagination, or the reasoning faculty, is not intellectual culture. The first condition of successful bodily labor is health; and, as a man in health can do what an unhealthy man cannot do, and as, of this health, the properties are strength, energy, agility, graceful carriage and action, manual dexterity, and endurance of fatigue, so, in like manner, general culture of mind is the best aid to professional and scientific study, and the educated man can do what the illiterate man cannot. As Prof. J. H. Newman, — himself a brilliant example of the culture that comes from liberal studies, — remarks: “The man who has learned to think, and to reason, and to compare, and to discriminate, and to analyze; who has refined his taste, and formed his judgment, and sharpened his mental vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian; but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of these sciences or callings, or any other for which he has a taste or special talent, with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and a success, to which another is a stranger.”
Let us not be misunderstood. We cherish no extreme opinion on this subject. We have no sympathy with those who think that all wisdom is summed p in a knowledge of Greek particles, — with the men who can give exactly all the dates of the petty skirmishes in the 124 Peloponnesian War, and yet have always supposed that Hyde and Clarendon were different persons, — or men like Dr. George, who doubted whether Frederick the Great, with all his victories, could conjugate a Greek verb in mi. We cannot think a tittle less of Burke’s genius, because, in the House of Commons, he accented the antepenult instead of the penult of vectigal; or of the Duke of Wellington’s, because, though he conquered Napoleon, he turned round, when reading his Chancellor’s address at Oxford, and whispered, “I say, is it Jac-o-bus?” But we do contend that, as the records of human thought are in many languages, so no man can be deemed educated who knows no language but a modern one, and that his own. That person cannot, certainly, be called an intelligent workman who has no care for the state or condition of the instrument with which he works. If the sword be blunt, or made of inferior steel, it will do little execution. If the vessel wants capacity, you cannot freight her with a valuable cargo; or if her engine wants power, she will make little headway against the billows. The mind is the man’s instrument, be he lawyer, doctor, merchant, engineer, or farmer; and the stronger and more highly finished the instrument, the better will be its work.
If there is any one faculty of the mind which is more valuable than the others, — which is absolutely indispensable to success in every calling, — it is the judgment. It is the master-principle of business, literature, and science, which qualifies one to grapple with any subject he may apply himself to, and enables him to seize the strong point in it. How is this power to be obtained? Is it by the study of any one subject, however important? 125 Assuredly not; but only by study and comparison of the most opposite things; by the most varied reading and discipline first, and observation afterwards. If there is one well-ascertained fact in education, it is, that the man who has been trained to think upon one subject will never be a good judge even in that one; whereas the enlargement of his circle gives him increased knowledge and power in a rapidly-increasing ratio, — so much do ideas act, not as solitary units, but by grouping and combination; so necessary is it to know something of a thousand other things, in order to know one thing well.
It is, however, the meanest of all the cants of ignorance to assert that there is any incompatibility between business or practical talents and scholarship, — for the successful booby to cry down accomplishments in the counting-room or the carpenter’s shop. As if cultivated intelligence, added to refinement of manners and systematic order, should accomplish less than undisciplined native power!, — as if the Damascus blade lost its edge by being polished, or as if the supporting column of an edifice were less strong because its shaft is fluted and its capital carved! We believe that it might easily be shown that a liberal education, which is only another name for intelligence, knowledge, intellectual force, promotes success in every honest calling, even though that calling be to cut cheese or open oysters, — or, even lower still, to make political speeches and electioneer for Congress. But, suppose that it were not so; that it did not contribute one jot or tittle to success, in the vulgar sense of that word. Were men designed to be mere merchants, farmers, or mechanics, and nothing more? Man is not a means, but an end. He claims a generous culture, not because he is to follow the 126 plow, wield the sledge, or buy and sell wheat or cotton, but because he is man. The fact that the ordinary pursuits of life are widely removed from liberal studies is of itself a cogent reason why those who are to be incessantly dealing with material forms should early foster a taste for those studies which, in the language of another, “reclaim men from the dominion of the senses; recruit their overtasked energies; quicken within them the sensibilities of taste; and invite them to the contemplation of whatever is lovely in the sympathies of our common nature, splendid in the conquests of intellect, or heroic in the trials of virtue.”
Those who clamor for the so-called “practical education” forget that, antecedent to his calling as merchant, engineer, or carpenter, there is another profession, more important still, for which every man should be trained, “the profession of humanity.” As Rousseau, in his famous treatise on education, which contains many golden truths imbedded among its errors, justly says: “Nature has destined us for the offices of human life, antecedently to our destination concerning society. To live, is the profession I would teach him [a youth]. Let him first be a man; he will, on occasion, as soon become anything else that a man ought to be as any person whatever. Fortune may remove him from one place to another as she pleases; he will always be found in his place.” We believe in “practical” education most sincerely; only we would use the word in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. We call that education practical which educes all a man’s faculties, and gives him possession of himself. We call that practical education which enables a man to bring all his faculties to bear at once with energy and earnestness 127 on any given point, and to keep them fastened on that point until the task he has set for them is accomplished. We call that education practical which gives a man a clear, conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, and enables him to develop them with fullness, to express them with eloquence, and to urge them with force. That is practical education, which teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. That is practical education which enables him to estimate with precision the worth of an argument, to detect the hidden relations of things, to trace effects to their causes, to grasp a mass of detached and dislocated facts, reduce them to order and harmony, and marshal them under the sway of some general law. That is practical education which enables him to know his own weakness, to command his own passions, to adapt himself to circumstances, to perceive the significance of actions, events, and opinions. That is practical education which opens his mind, expands it, and refines it; fits it to digest, master, and use its knowledge; gives it flexibility, tact, method, critical exactness, sagacity, discrimination, resource, address and expression.
Such a man is full of resources, and prepared for any event. Misfortunes cannot kill him, nor disasters depress him. He organizes victory out of defeat, and converts obstacles into stepping-stones to success. Life to him is never stale, flat, and unprofitable; but always fresh, stimulating, opulent. In the words of the polished writer already quoted, “He is at home in any society; he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak, and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he 128 is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably when he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious, and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm.”