Thomas Clifford Allbutt

“ The spontaneous and equable play of all sides of life favors growth and tone; but to enter the colt for the race, to bloom and seed the young plant, or to put the young male to the stud, is to stint their growth and to exhaust their vigor. Precocity is gained at the cost of feeble maturity and early decay. And yet, can the young brain grow, cell add itself to cell, and fibre knit itself to fibre, without work and play? ”

“ That in our scheme of education we give the means of it to all, and full play to individual gifts—not promoting a dull uniformity, nor pinching back the buds of mental growth; nor, on the other hand, forgetting that as great men often appear in unpromising times, so great gifts in the individual are often long in showing themselves. The early dunce often ripens into the later genius. I find this late unfolding of greater gifts, though by no means universal or perhaps even general, yet is so common that as a teacher I have schooled myself into much sympathy with dunces. ”

“ How great quality and quantity of brain may fall short of achievement, for lack of high tension rather than of control, must be sought in the story of "Hamlet" and like inventions; for, although the unhappy General Trochu is not yet quite forgotten, none such leave an enduring name. How many of us know that quiet friend unnoted of the many, unfelt by the world; whose powers of assimilating knowledge are great, whose intellect is capacious, and whose accomplishments are manifold, but whose nerve-currents are of low or inconstant tension! ”

“ How, then, are we so to wield our instruments of education as to promote the increase of control, tension, and quantity, without stifling quality and variety, and how are we to use these virtues in the riper man without disabling him?
Quality, as I have said, cannot be had for the asking; it is fitful in its growth, and often born out of due time. It should be favored by the continuous inheritance of culture, but the mode of its epiphany lies in the same darkness with that developmental nisus which lies behind the advance of life upon the globe. ”

“ Quality of brain may, however, be lost if it is not invigorated and impelled by a strong breeze of nervous energy; nay, as in the case of the late Sir James Simpson, dauntless and inexhaustible nerve-quantity may so elevate the spirit and so strengthen the hand as to clothe the individual with a power beside that of genius itself, and urge him to work which will win the undying gratitude of men. Now, happily quantity, unlike quality, of brain-force is much under the power of education. ”

“ Of all endowments control is the most precious, and its nurture our most bounden duty. For a happy and useful life, perhaps control is more needful than quality, volume, variety or even tension of brain. But, were not men born to us whose high qualities of brain enable them to see more deeply into the secrets of Nature, our progress would cease; did quantity of brain-force cease from a people, that people would lack endurance ”

“ Brain-forcing is terribly mischievous. It urges genius into precocious fruitage, it drains the springs of nervous force, it excites high tension without giving volume to fortify it, it stints the variety of mental expansion, and by enforcing control it breaks the spirit. The true purpose of education is, first of all, to teach discipline—the discipline of the body, and the higher discipline of the mind and heart; to encourage the budding faculties to break freely in natural variety ”

“ On the other hand, education may often overlay it, thwart it, or expend it, and, as quality is largely dependent upon quantity or volume of nerve force, the ripening of those degrees of it which exist in ordinary men, and the favoring of those revelations of it which occur more rarely, are constantly prevented by brain-forcing in early life. In men of great quality or genius such brain-forcing has too often dimmed or blighted the splendor of their work, or has shortened their days, and has only failed to do so in others by virtue of their perennial springs of inward energy. ”

“ Pupil-teachers, again, present a curious subject for observation, and a sad one. Called upon as children to teach children, their brains turn backward, or stop at the stage they have attained, and the living stream of thought is congealed into a dead dogmatism. Their minds, no longer open to the dew of knowledge from above, are bent to the work of churning vapid juices for yet callower nurslings. ”

“ A luckless youth is forced to heat the yet empty chambers of his brain, and to forge false thunder therein at an age when he needs rather to sit at the feet of wisdom. Space forbids me to give instances from my books, but the facts are open to others as to myself. ”

“ Other curious instances of low tension are seen in those unhappy mortals who conceive so truly, and have mental force in such quantity, that they spend their lives in bestowing volumes of good advice upon their fellows, but who never rouse themselves to their own work or duty.
How, lastly, the greatest quality and capacity of mind, varied attainments, and spiritual fire, may be spent as a sky-rocket is spent for lack of control and direction, has been the theme of moralists of all centuries, from the death of Abel to our own time. ”

“ No mistake, then, is more fatal than that of parents who let children run wild, on the pretense of physical development. This, indeed, they may obtain, and how guarded we are to be in forcing the brain I need not say again; but there can be no misfortune to a child greater than to escape the life of justice, order, and rule, or to escape the training of those perceptions of social needs and social laws which, when graven in our ganglia and long current in our nerves, become habits of sympathy, charity, and self-sacrifice. ”

“ By the fire of his spirit there was roused so great an energy on the part of thousands of men as has hardly been known in these times; and he so put his people in heart, that not only the depression created by defeat, but the sense of being abandoned and left for sacrifice by the evading army, was succeeded by a quick growth of warlike pride, by a wholesome ardor for the fight, by an orderly, joyous activity. ”

“ The powers of the nervous system with which education is chiefly concerned are Quality, Quantity, Tension, Variety, and Control. Quality is beyond the direct efforts of education; its rarer development, both in nations and individuals, is as yet incalculable: in the early life of the individual it is often latent, and its greatest results belong to years of maturity. ”

“ If we turn to our own day and regard the life of a genius who, in quality and quantity of brain-activity with tremendous tension and infinite variety, occupies a position perhaps unique—I speak of Richard Wagner—we find he was born at Leipsic in the year 1813, and is now therefore sixty-five years of age, so that "Lohengrin" and the "Ring des Nibelungen" are the works of years more than mature. ”

“ Tension is a virtue without which quality and quantity of nerve force may be wasted. By it men overcome resistance, and are fired with impulse. Promptness, alertness, and acute sense, come also of this attribute. Tension may be increased greatly by education, and it springs up in the busier contentions of men. It is largely independent of physical health and of food, but is favored by action and the training of observation. Variety, by which men are enabled to touch the world at many points, can be favored by education. ”

“ One born before his time, in the inertia of his own generation, will find resistance enough to try his steel. Moreover, as I have said, great quality of brain may not be associated to high tension, and a moderate resistance may be fatal to achievement. A man may not be a Luther, a Cromwell, or a Knox, but he may be a Melanchthon, a Cranmer, or a Wishart, and in favoring days may do the work which was done by the former in virtue of high tension as well as of genius. ”

“ Here and there men may expend in the hunting-field or on the river that which should have been given to their tripos, to their profession, or to their country; yet this at worst is but an individual loss, far outweighed by the impulse given to the hardy, hungry vitality by which the nation thrives, and its general volume of nervous force is augmented. Again, it is an old truth that in youth production and growth or development are in a measure opponent. ”

“ A happy citizen of the republic of learning must have culture at once liberal and profound, at once general and special; to such a one a little knowledge is no longer a dangerous thing.
Finally, Control is partly innate, but greatly the creature of education. It is, I believe, the earliest work of education, the safest work and the most abiding. As an innate virtue it consists, no doubt, in the superposition of more complex or higher centres upon the lower and upon the weaving of these together by commissures of various orders. ”

“ This invaluable attribute is happily much under the influence of education. Compare, for instance, the slow wit of the rustic with the mental alertness of the "joly prentis of Chepe." Education can not only instruct the mind, but can make it apprehensive, nimble, and even fiery. "It is of no use to know a thing," we often say to our bedside students, "unless you can deliver yourself of your knowledge." ”

“ But that which they who govern education can do is, to give to genius and to character a free way for expansion and action. We cannot make such a man as Edwards the naturalist of Banff, and the more sad is it that such men when born to us are too often maimed or driven by circumstance, and their gifts despoiled. ”

“ Although Todleben seemed to be one to whom the very labors of fighting and of exterminating the weaker breeds of men must be an easy and delightful exertion of natural strength, he had joyous, kind-looking eyes, almost ready to melt with good-humor, and a bearing and speech so frank and genial, strangers were instantly inclined to like, and very soon after to trust in him. ”

“ Some may aver, and not without seeming of truth, that trial is to genius as the furnace to noble metal. But, surely, this world will always offer to its children a front stern enough for their chastisement, and a law hard enough for their contrition—there needs not the imposition of fetters of ours, nor the devices of our caprice or austerity. ”

“ It would seem to be the aim of good education to insist upon a mastery of one or more subjects, that the grown man should be able to fight with the foremost, to concentrate his powers, and to realize what knowledge is, but that at the same time he should gain some not inadequate notion of the whole field of the battle of life. ”

“ Almost daily I am in contention with parents and guardians, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, clergymen and professors, youths and maidens, boys and girls, concerning the right way of building up the young brain, of ripening the adult brain, and of preserving the brain in age. Grievously ill do we take in hand to deal with this delicate member, and well is it that innate development overruns our schemes and brings the variety of natural good out of the monotony of human folly. ”

“ This is not unfavorable to quantity of nerve-force, but perhaps it is unfavorable to the quality or high development of special ganglionic groups, and also to tenacity or steadfast intensity. The schoolmaster therefore abhors versatility, and that greater schoolmaster, the world, grinds it to dust. Without variety the pedant loses the sense of the infinite interests and conditions of life; with variety and without penetration the dilettante is ignorant of the depths of his own ignorance. ”

“ It is dimly felt by society that the reign of bone and muscle is over, and that the reign of brain and nerve is taking its place. Even the Gibeonites now have the hydraulic ram and the steam felling-machine; the spectacled general of forces fights in his tent by click of battery and wire, and his lieutenant hoists an iron-clad by the touch of two buttons upon his waistcoat; the patient earth forgets the tread of horse and ox, and is ploughed by steam ”

“ If in excess, it results in aimless dissipation of energy; if duly consorted with full knowledge of one or more subjects, it gives breadth and flexibility to the intellect, and promotes the happiness of personal and social life; it favors general progress by permitting the more rapid diffusion of the knowledge won by the few. Lastly, control is eminently a creature of education, and is perhaps the most precious gift of the individual man. ”

“ These words seem almost too simple—these truths too obvious for repetition; yet for lack of that which lies in them our modern schemes of education are day after day ruining the young by overstimulation and unhealthy competition. Happily, the public is awaking to its error, and is beginning to regret the days when its young dunces grew into its old heroes. What we did blindly in the past by trusting to the hidden wealth of Nature, we may now do face to face by the revelation of her secrets. ”

“ Without justice, temperance, and definite industry, the most brilliant attributes of mind may be impotent for good, and without the habit of social subordination and the bond of social sympathy the most brilliant society would be but a rope of diamonds. ”