THE ECLECTIC REVIEW, FOR FEBRUARY, 1825. Art. I. 1. An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark. By Robert Dale Owen. 8vo. pp. 104. Glasgow, 1824. 2. Observations on the Anti-Christian Tendency of Modern Education, and on the Practicability and Means of its Improvement. By John Campbell, of Carbrook, F.R.S.E. 12mo. pp. 142. Edinburgh, 1823. 3. A Plea on Behalf of a Christian Nation, for the Christian Education of its Youth. Addressed to various Classes of Society. Abridged from the larger Work of the Rev. George Monro, M.A. Vicar of Letterkenny, Ireland, in 1711. 8vo. pp. 112. London, 1823. 4. A Practical Essay on the Manner of Studying and Teaching in Scotland: or a Guide to Students at the University, to Parish Schoolmasters, and Family Tutors. 12mo. pp. 302. Price 5s. Edinburgh, 1823. 5. The Church of England Catechism. By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. A new Edition. 18mo. pp. 96. Price 2s. 6d. London, 1824. ALL these publications, though of widely different character, bear upon one common topic, the grand subject of National Education. We mean to say something about each of them, but our chief reason for bringing them now before the attention of our readers is, that they will afford us a fair opportunity of offering a few remarks on the present state of the controversy. Happily, it is no longer a question among us in Great Britain, whether the people ought to have education, or not. This is a great point gained; and we may forgive the National Society the assumption and fallacy implied in its designation, for the sake of the pledge thus afforded, that the nation at large shall have the means of education provided for Vol. XXIII. N.S." K them. Whether they shall be taught to read and write in national schools, or in schools for all,' is, in our view, a matter of little importance, provided that they be well taught,—provided that no deception be practised on the public, and that that do not ensue, which too often happened in our old Charity schools and free schools, that the only party benefited by the school was the master. No system can preclude the possibility of abuses; but that must obviously be the most effective, or the most likely to continue so, which affords the fewest facilities to abuses, by rendering it necessary that the public should be a party to them. : It is agreed on all hands, that popular ignorance is an evil. The converse of the proposition is not, perhaps, so generally assented to, that knowledge is a good. Indeed, the poetical axiom, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,' appears to have gained so firm a hold on the minds of some persons, that it goes far to neutralize the first concession. For, if this be absolutely true, seeing that a little knowledge is all that the lower classes can ever have the means of attaining to, there must be danger in their being taught at all. And this is the very conclusion, truly a most logical one, which a large class of persons have been led to adopt. The apprehension which formerly prevailed, was, lest the people should know too much that which is now more generally expressed, is, lest they should be taught too little. But when this latter fear, instead of operating simply as a stimulant to benevolent exertion, is converted into an objection to plans of education, both come to much the same thing. The fear that they should be taught too much, or that they should be taught too little, springs alike from a jealousy of the effects of knowledge, as if its value wholly depended on certain conditions,-on the measure in which, or the channel by which it is conveyed. Now, in opposition to this notion, we are prepared to contend, on the one hand, that the measure of knowledge proper for the people to be put in possession of, cannot be defined, and ought not, were it possible, to be limited. And it is one of the most valuable properties of all knowledge, that it provides for its own increase, by constantly producing a desire to know more. But, on the other hand, we do not shrink from avowing our conviction, that no danger or possible evil attendant on any measure or degree of knowledge, how partial or limited soever, can render that one remove from ignorance more dangerous, or in any respect less desirable, than absolute ignorance. In other words, we cannot admit that a poor man without the knowledge of religion, is likely to be the better member of society for being kept without any other species of knowledge; that infidelity and impiety ought to be punished with ignorance; or that it would be for the benefit of society, that none but the religiously instructed should be provided with the means of maintaining themselves by any labour which requires the knowledge of reading, writing, or arithmetic. That the knowing should forge, we cannot regard as a more likely or a worse consequence, than that the ignorant should thieve or utter forgeries. Indeed, it almost always happens, that the ignorant are the tools of the knowing in the commission of crime; nor can any power of mischief conferred by knowledge on the vicious and the depraved, be so great as that which they derive from the ignorance of the untaught. For all the evils of knowledge, then, we maintain that knowledge is the only antidote. We are quite aware that these positions may appear to many of our readers in the light of mere truisms. They certainly approximate very closely to the nature of self-evident propositions, but they are very far from being admitted truths. And if the vague opinions of many of the half-friends of Education were analysed, they would be found to involve nothing short of a denial of the truisms we have set down. Nay, we have heard it boldly stated, that Education is an evil, if it be not a religious education; a phrase so indefinite, that either it may mean a course of religious discipline and instruction such as no system can provide, or it may mean simply learning the Church Catechism and going to church. But, waiving this, while we will yield to no one in attachment to the Sunday School System, one great recommendation of which is, that it secures, to a certain extent, the formation of religious habits; -while we are deeply persuaded of the danger arising from an irreligious population, and are ready to admit that the education which stops short of conveying religious instruction and promoting religious habits, is essentially defective,—we altogether deny that Education can ever assume the character of a positive evil. As far as it goes, its tendency is all in favour of religion, as well as of subordination and good order. It was a convenient way of distinguishing opinions in former days, with all its disadvantages, to give them the name of their originator. Were it not that these stenographic symbols are liable to become terms of obloquy, it saved much circumlocution, to be able to distinguish the abettors of certain opinions as Platonists or Aristotelians, Scotists or Thomists, Jansenists or Molinists, Lutherans or Calvinists. As regards the various opinions which are at present maintained on the subject of Education, we feel the want of some such convenient mode of classification. First, there is the old Papistical School, at the head of which we may place his present Holiness, Leo XII., who calls upon God to arise and suppress, destroy, and re'duce to nothing, the unbridled licentiousness of speaking, writing, and publishing'-those who denounce as the three great plagues of the Church, Education, the Press, and the Bible Society. Next, there are our Semi-Papists, who would let the Bible have its liberty, if bailed by the Prayer Book, and have no great objection to schools as a measure of self-defence. Thirdly, there is the Infidel school, consisting of those who agree with Pope Leo and other opponents of the Bible Society, Catholic and Protestant, that the Word of God is unfit for the vulgar, but who differ from them in toto as to the inexpediency of education. Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen may be considered as standing at the head of this class. Lastly, there are the class stigmatized as Bible-men, who, perceiving that the "people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," would, by every possible means, teach their neighbour, and put into every man's hand the volume from which he may learn to "know the Lord." Three of these classes may be regarded as friends to education, but to very different sorts of education, and with widely differing ideas on the general subject. Nor, let us be beguiled by the mere name into a notion so mistaken, as that the parties mean by that name the same thing, that they agree either as to the means or the end. The avowed principle of the Bible-men is, that they would have every peasant and every peasant's child taught to read his New Testament. This principle, says the Papist, is subversive of all religion: the reading of the Scriptures will drown them in heresy and perdition. The Bible only, says the Venerable of Bartlett's Buildings, will endanger the Church. The doctrines of the Bible, says the Lanark Reformer, tend to discourage all attempts to promote the virtue or happiness of the world. It is surely time, in the nineteenth century, that this question were fairly determined; for we must frankly profess, that were we of Mr. Owen's opinion, or of Mr. Bentham's opinion, or of Pope Leo's opinion, or of Mr. O'Callaghan's opinion, respecting the dangerous character of the Bible, we should begin to have doubts whether reading were not a perilous acquirement, knowledge an element of danger, and schools, even New Lanark schools, most pernicious institutions. If men are once taught to read, they may begin to think; and to keep the Bible from them then, will be next to impossible. If you accompany the Bible with a Prayer-book or with Roman Catholic notes, you have no security that the Prayerbook or the notes will be read,-that the poison may not have had time to work before the corrective can operate. There is something startling in this new confederacy that have taken the field against the Bible-the Pope and the Sultan-the Beast and the False Prophet-Captain Rock's clergy and Jeremy Bentham. To meet with new arguments old objections, is, in the present case, next to impossible, nor is it necessary; but it becomes desirable to bring forward and furbish up our old weapons of proof on such an occasion. Mr. Owen stands first on our list. The founder of the 'schools at New Lanark,' says his Son, has been accused of bringing up the children without religion.' We understood that he wished to do it, rather than he had actually succeeded in accomplishing this part of his system; and in fact, we are afterwards informed, that the Scriptures are, and have always been, statedly read, and the Catechism regularly taught at New Lanark. This has been done,' it is stated, not as being con⚫sidered the proper method of conveying religious instruction to the minds of young children, but because the parents were ' believed to wish it.' We are to understand, therefore, that Mr. Owen's opinion is against the reading of the Bible and the Catechism. We must be permitted, however, to dismiss the Catechism in the present instance, as we cannot allow it to stand on the same ground as the Scriptures. Mr. Owen's system would exclude both; and yet, its tendency, his Son contends, is the very reverse of irreligious, because an acquaintance with the works of the Deity, such as these children acquire, must lay the basis of true religion.' The children of Lanark are initiated, it seems, into the rudiments of astronomy, natural history, geography, and other sciences; and by this means, Mr. Owen conceives that he lays a basis for true religion. What he means by a basis, may perhaps be gathered from the subsequent remark, that religious doctrines are deductions perhaps founded on facts.' Teach a child facts, therefore, and he will be sure to deduce from those facts religious doctrines. Teach him astronomy and geography, and he will believe there is a God! This, if we do not misunderstand Mr. Robert Dale Owen, is the plain English of his statement. But we should imagine that even the New Lanark system in its most perfected state, would admit of our teaching even very young children, that the earth did not make itself, and that he who made the earth and sky and all living beings, is God. We hope that it would not be insisted on, that a child must learn geography before he is taught thus much of religious doctrine. And even should the teacher go so far as to represent the Deity as wise, and powerful, and good, and holy in perfection, instead of leaving the child to derive these doctrines from an acquaintance with the works of the Deity,' we |