Chapter LIV: Part III: Of the Expense of public Works and public Institutions (3)

When Christianity was first established by law, a corrupted Latin had
become the common language of all the western parts of Europe. The service
of the church, accordingly, and the translation of the Bible which were
read in churches, were both in that corrupted Latin; that is, in the
common language of the country, After the irruption of the barbarous
nations who overturned the Roman empire, Latin gradually ceased to be the
language of any part of Europe. But the reverence of the people naturally
preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the
circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable, are no
more. Though Latin, therefore, was no longer understood anywhere by the
great body of the people, the whole service of the church still continued
to be performed in that language. Two different languages were thus
established in Europe, in the same manner as in ancient Egypt: a language
of the priests, and a language of the people; a sacred and a profane, a
learned and an unlearned language. But it was necessary that the priests
should understand something of that sacred and learned language in which
they were to officiate; and the study of the Latin language therefore
made, from the beginning, an essential part of university education.

It was not so with that either of the Greek or of the Hebrew language. The
infallible decrees of the church had pronounced the Latin translation of
the Bible, commonly called the Latin Vulgate, to have been equally
dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore of equal authority with the
Greek and Hebrew originals. The knowledge of those two languages,
therefore, not being indispensably requisite to a churchman, the study of
them did not for a long time make a necessary part of the common course of
university education. There are some Spanish universities, I am assured,
in which the study of the Greek language has never yet made any part of
that course. The first reformers found the Greek text of the New
Testament, and even the Hebrew text of the Old, more favourable to their
opinions than the vulgate translation, which, as might naturally be
supposed, had been gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of the
Catholic Church. They set themselves, therefore, to expose the many errors
of that translation, which the Roman catholic clergy were thus put under
the necessity of defending or explaining. But this could not well be done
without some knowledge of the original languages, of which the study was
therefore gradually introduced into the greater part of universities; both
of those which embraced, and of those which rejected, the doctrines of the
reformation. The Greek language was connected with every part of that
classical learning, which, though at first principally cultivated by
catholics and Italians, happened to come into fashion much about the same
time that the doctrines of the reformation were set on foot. In the
greater part of universities, therefore, that language was taught previous
to the study of philosophy, and as soon as the student had made some
progress in the Latin. The Hebrew language having no connection with
classical learning, and, except the Holy Scriptures, being the language of
not a single book in any esteem the study of it did not commonly commence
till after that of philosophy, and when the student had entered upon the
study of theology.

Originally, the first rudiments, both of the Greek and Latin languages,
were taught in universities; and in some universities they still continue
to be so. In others, it is expected that the student should have
previously acquired, at least, the rudiments of one or both of those
languages, of which the study continues to make everywhere a very
considerable part of university education.

The ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three great branches;
physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic.
This general division seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things.

The great phenomena of nature, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies,
eclipses, comets; thunder and lightning, and other extraordinary meteors;
the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals;
are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they
naturally call forth the curiosity of mankind to inquire into their
causes. Superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by
referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the
gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more
familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with, than
the agency of the gods. As those great phenomena are the first objects of
human curiosity, so the science which pretends to explain them must
naturally have been the first branch of philosophy that was cultivated.
The first philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any
account, appear to have been natural philosophers.

In every age and country of the world, men must have attended to the
characters, designs, and actions of one another; and many reputable rules
and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and
approved of by common consent. As soon as writing came into fashion, wise
men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to
increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to
express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct,
sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called
the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms
or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and
Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod. They might continue in
this manner, for a long time, merely to multiply the number of those
maxims of prudence and morality, without even attempting to arrange them
in any very distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them
together by one or more general principles, from which they were all
deducible, like effects from their natural causes. The beauty of a
systematical arrangement of different observations, connected by a few
common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient
times towards a system of natural philosophy. Something of the same kind
was afterwards attempted in morals. The maxims of common life were
arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common
principles, in the same manner as they had attempted to arrange and
connect the phenomena of nature. The science which pretends to investigate
and explain those connecting principles, is what is properly called Moral
Philosophy.

Different authors gave different systems, both of natural and moral
philosophy. But the arguments by which they supported those different
systems, far from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but
very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no
other foundation but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language.
Speculative systems, have, in all ages of the world, been adopted for
reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common
sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has
scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in
matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had
the greatest. The patrons of each system of natural and moral philosophy,
naturally endeavoured to expose the weakness of the arguments adduced to
support the systems which were opposite to their own. In examining those
arguments, they were necessarily led to consider the difference between a
probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a
conclusive one; and logic, or the science of the general principles of
good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of the observations which a
scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to; though, in its origin, posterior
both to physics and to ethics, it was commonly taught, not indeed in all,
but in the greater part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously
to either of those sciences. The student, it seems to have been thought,
ought to understand well the difference between good and bad reasoning,
before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great importance.

This ancient division of philosophy into three parts was, in the greater
part of the universities of Europe, changed for another into five.

In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the nature
either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of the system of
physics. Those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to
consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too,
productive of the most important effects. Whatever human reason could
either conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two
chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science which
pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great
system of the universe. But in the universities of Europe, where
philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to
dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science.
They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many
inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so
little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of
philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The
doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two
distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in
opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime,
but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful
science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a
subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful
discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a
very few simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can
discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently
produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.

When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another,
the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was
called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and
attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two
sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the
metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this
cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called
metaphysics.

Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not
only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of
the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral
philosophy proposed to investigate. In that philosophy, the duties of
human life were treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection
of human life, But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be
taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were
treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. In
the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as
necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most
perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was
frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always,
inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to
be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and
abasement of a monk, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of
a man. Casuistry, and an ascetic morality, made up, in most cases, the
greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. By far the most
important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this
manner by far the most corrupted.

Such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education in the
greater part of the universities in Europe. Logic was taught first;
ontology came in the second place; pneumatology, comprehending the
doctrine concerning the nature of the human soul and of the Deity, in the
third; in the fourth followed a debased system of moral philosophy, which
was considered as immediately connected with the doctrines of
pneumatology, with the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards
and punishments which, from the justice of the Deity, were to be expected
in a life to come: a short and superficial system of physics usually
concluded the course.

The alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced into the
ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the education of
ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper introduction to the study of
theology. But the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the
casuistry and ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it,
certainly did not render it more for the education of gentlemen or men of
the world, or more likely either to improve the understanding or to mend
the heart.

This course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the
greater part of the universities of Europe, with more or less diligence,
according as the constitution of each particular university happens to
render diligence more or less necessary to the teachers. In some of the
richest and best endowed universities, the tutors content themselves with
teaching a few unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course;
and even these they commonly teach very negligently and superficially.

The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several
different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been
made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of
universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements
after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen
to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and
obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been
hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and
best endowed universities have been slowest in adopting those
improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the
established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily
introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers,
depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence,
were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world.

But though the public schools and universities of Europe were originally
intended only for the education of a particular profession, that of
churchmen; and though they were not always very diligent in instructing
their pupils, even in the sciences which were supposed necessary for that
profession; yet they gradually drew to themselves the education of almost
all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune.
No better method, it seems, could be fallen upon, of spending, with any
advantage, the long interval between infancy and that period of life at
which men begin to apply in good earnest to the real business of the
world, the business which is to employ them during the remainder of their
days. The greater part of what is taught in schools and universities,
however, does not seem to be the most proper preparation for that
business.

In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young
people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving
school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it
is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young
man, who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at
one-and-twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went
abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in
three or four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires
some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however,
which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them
with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more
conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any
serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well
have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very
young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious
years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his
parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier parts of his
education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being
riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced.
Nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing
themselves to fall, could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a
practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending
his son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so
disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going
to ruin before his eyes.

Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for
education.

Different plans and different institutions for education seem to have
taken place in other ages and nations.

In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen was instructed,
under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and
in music. By gymnastic exercises, it was intended to harden his body, to
sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of
war; and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that
ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have
answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. By the other
part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers and historians,
who have given us an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind,
to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all the social and
moral duties of public and private life.

In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same
purpose as those of the Gymnasium in ancient Greece, and they seem to have
answered it equally well. But among the Romans there was nothing which
corresponded to the musical education of the Greeks. The morals of the
Romans, however, both in private and public life, seem to have been, not
only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal superior to those of the
Greeks. That they were superior in private life, we have the express
testimony of Polybius, and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, two authors well
acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor of the Greek and Roman
history bears witness to the superiority of the public morals of the
Romans. The good temper and moderation of contending factions seem to be
the most essential circumstances in the public morals of a free people.
But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary;
whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any
Roman faction; and from the time of the Gracchi, the Roman republic may be
considered as in reality dissolved. Notwithstanding, therefore, the very
respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius, and
notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by which Mr Montesquieu
endeavours to support that authority, it seems probable that the musical
education of the Greeks had no great effect in mending their morals,
since, without any such education, those of the Romans were, upon the
whole, superior. The respect of those ancient sages for the institutions
of their ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political
wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued, without
interruption, from the earliest period of those societies, to the times in
which they had arrived at a considerable degree of refinement. Music and
dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the
great accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for entertaining
his society. It is so at this day among the negroes on the coast of
Africa. It was so among the ancient Celtes, among the ancient
Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, among the ancient Greeks,
in the times preceding the Trojan war. When the Greek tribes had formed
themselves into little republics, it was natural that the study of those
accomplishments should for a long time make a part of the public and
common education of the people.

The masters who instructed the young people, either in music or in
military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed by
the state, either in Rome or even at Athens, the Greek republic of whose
laws and customs we are the best informed. The state required that every
free citizen should fit himself for defending it in war, and should upon
that account, learn his military exercises. But it left him to learn them
of such masters as he could find; and it seems to have advanced nothing
for this purpose, but a public field or place of exercise, in which he
should practise and perform them.

In the early ages, both of the Greek and Roman republics, the other parts
of education seem to have consisted in learning to read, write, and
account, according to the arithmetic of the times. These accomplishments
the richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired at home, by the
assistance of some domestic pedagogue, who was, generally, either a slave
or a freedman; and the poorer citizens in the schools of such masters as
made a trade of teaching for hire. Such parts of education, however, were
abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians of each
individual. It does not appear that the state ever assumed any inspection
or direction of them. By a law of Solon, indeed, the children were
acquitted from maintaining those parents who had neglected to instruct
them in some profitable trade or business.

In the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came into
fashion, the better sort of people used to send their children to the
schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in order to be instructed in
these fashionable sciences. But those schools were not supported by the
public. They were, for a long time, barely tolerated by it. The demand for
philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first
professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one
city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In this manner
lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many others. As the
demand increased, the school, both of philosophy and rhetoric, became
stationary, first in Athens, and afterwards in several other cities. The
state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further, than by
assigning to some of them a particular place to teach in, which was
sometimes done, too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned
the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of
Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed his gardens to
his own school. Till about the time of Marcus Antoninus, however, no
teacher appears to have had any salary from the public, or to have had any
other emoluments, but what arose from the honoraries or fees of his
scholars. The bounty which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from
Lucian, bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted
no longer than his own life. There was nothing equivalent to the
privileges of graduation; and to have attended any of those schools was
not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise any particular trade
or profession. If the opinion of their own utility could not draw scholars
to them, the law neither forced anybody to go to them, nor rewarded
anybody for having gone to them. The teachers had no jurisdiction over
their pupils, nor any other authority besides that natural authority which
superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people
towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education.

At Rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education, not of
the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular families. The
young people, however, who wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had no
public school to go to, and had no other method of studying it, than by
frequenting the company of such of their relations and friends as were
supposed to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that
though the laws of the twelve tables were many of them copied from those
of some ancient Greek republics, yet law never seems to have grown up to
be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. In Rome it became a
science very early, and gave a considerable degree of illustration to
those citizens who had the reputation of understanding it. In the
republics of ancient Greece, particularly in Athens, the ordinary courts
of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of
people, who frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction,
and party-spirit, happened to determine. The ignominy of an unjust
decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, or
fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts were so very numerous),
could not fall very heavy upon any individual. At Rome, on the contrary,
the principal courts of justice consisted either of a single judge, or of
a small number of judges, whose characters, especially as they deliberated
always in public, could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or
unjust decision. In doubtful cases such courts, from their anxiety to
avoid blame, would naturally endeavour to shelter themselves under the
example or precedent of the judges who had sat before them, either in the
same or in some other court. This attention to practice and precedent,
necessarily formed the Roman law into that regular and orderly system in
which it has been delivered down to us; and the like attention has had the
like effects upon the laws of every other country where such attention has
taken place. The superiority of character in the Romans over that of the
Greeks, so much remarked by Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was
probably more owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice,
than to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it. The
Romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for their superior
respect to an oath. But the people who were accustomed to make oath only
before some diligent and well informed court of justice, would naturally
be much more attentive to what they swore, than they who were accustomed
to do the same thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies.

The abilities, both civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans, will
readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern
nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. But except in
what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no
pains to form those great abilities; for I cannot be induced to believe
that the musical education of the Greeks could be of much consequence in
forming them. Masters, however, had been found, it seems, for instructing
the better sort of people among those nations, in every art and science in
which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or
convenient for them to be instructed. The demand for such instruction
produced, what it always produces, the talent for giving it; and the
emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite, appears
to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection. In the
attention which the ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they
acquired over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the
faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and character to the
conduct and conversation of those auditors, they appear to have been much
superior to any modern teachers. In modern times, the diligence of public
teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them
more or less independent of their success and reputation in their
particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who
would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a
merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in competition with those
who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the
same price, he cannot have the same profit; and poverty and beggary at
least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he
attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers,
that his circumstances will not be much mended. The privileges of
graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least
extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that is, to the
far greater part of those who have occasion for a learned education. But
those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the
public teachers. The most careful attendance upon the ablest instructions
of any private teacher cannot always give any title to demand them. It is
from these different causes that the private teacher of any of the
sciences, which are commonly taught in universities, is, in modern times,
generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of letters. A man
of real abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or a more
unprofitable employment to turn them to. The endowments of schools and
colleges have in this manner not only corrupted the diligence of public
teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private
ones.

Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science,
would be taught, for which there was not some demand, or which the
circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary or
convenient, or at least fashionable to learn. A private teacher could
never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated
system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally
believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense.
Such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated
societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a great
measure independent of their industry. Were there no public institutions
for education, a gentleman, after going through, with application and
abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances
of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world
completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of
conversation among gentlemen and men of the world.

There are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is
accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in the common course
of their education. They are taught what their parents or guardians judge
it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing
else. Every part of their education tends evidently to some useful
purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to
form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to
render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and to
behave properly when they have become such. In every part of her life, a
woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her
education. It seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, derives
any conveniency or advantage from some of the most laborious and
troublesome parts of his education.

Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the
education of the people? Or, if it ought to give any, what are the
different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different
orders of the people? and in what manner ought it to attend to them?

In some cases, the state of society necessarily places the greater part of
individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any
attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that
state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases, the state of the
society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations;
and some attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the
almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people.

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far
greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of
the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations;
frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of
men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose
whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the
effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no
occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in
finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He
naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally
becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing
or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any
generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just
judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of
the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether
incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to
render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in
war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage
of his mind, and makes him regard, with abhorrence, the irregular,
uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the
activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength
with vigour and perseverance in any other employment, than that to which
he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this
manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and
martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the
state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the
people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to
prevent it.

It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called,
of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of
husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the
extension of foreign commerce. In such societies, the varied occupations
of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent
expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring.
Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that
drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the
understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those
barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been
observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman,
and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society,
and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good
judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of
almost every single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can
well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men
sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude society
there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual,
there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does,
or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is
capable of being. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge,
ingenuity, and invention but scarce any man has a great degree. The
degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for
conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state,
on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the
greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those
of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite
variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached
to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to
examine the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a
variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless
comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an
extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few,
however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their
great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very
little to the good government or happiness of their society.
Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of
the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and
extinguished in the great body of the people.

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and
commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people
of some rank and fortune. People of some rank and fortune are generally
eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter upon that particular
business, profession, or trade, by which they propose to distinguish
themselves in the world. They have, before that, full time to acquire, or
at least to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment
which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them worthy of
it. Their parents or guardians are generally sufficiently anxious that
they should be so accomplished, and are in most cases, willing enough to
lay out the expense which is necessary for that purpose. If they are not
always properly educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out
upon their education, but from the improper application of that expense.
It is seldom from the want of masters, but from the negligence and
incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and from the difficulty, or
rather from the impossibility, which there is, in the present state of
things, of finding any better. The employments, too, in which people of
some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like
those of the common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of
them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the
hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments,
can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The employments of people of
some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from
morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which
they may perfect themselves in every branch, either of useful or
ornamental knowledge, of which they may have laid the foundation, or for
which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life.

It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for
education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them, even in
infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade,
by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so
simple and uniform, as to give little exercise to the understanding;
while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe,
that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or
even to think of any thing else.

But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well
instructed as people of some rank and fortune; the most essential parts of
education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so
early a period of life, that the greater part, even of those who are to be
bred to the lowest occupations, have time to acquire them before they can
be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense, the public can
facilitate, can encourage and can even impose upon almost the whole body
of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of
education.

The public can facilitate this acquisition, by establishing in every
parish or district a little school, where children maybe taught for a
reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master
being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public; because, if he was
wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect
his business. In Scotland, the establishment of such parish schools has
taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion
of them to write and account. In England, the establishment of charity
schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally,
because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little
schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little
more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little
smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes
taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were
instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary
education of this rank of people would, perhaps, be as complete as can be.
There is scarce a common trade, which does not afford some opportunities
of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which
would not, therefore, gradually exercise and improve the common people in
those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime, as well
as to the most useful sciences.

The public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of
education, by giving small premiums, and little badges of distinction, to
the children of the common people who excel in them.

The public can impose upon almost the whole body of the people the
necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education, by obliging
every man to undergo an examination or probation in them, before he can
obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade,
either in a village or town corporate.

It was in this manner, by facilitating the acquisition of their military
and gymnastic exercises, by encouraging it, and even by imposing upon the
whole body of the people the necessity of learning those exercises, that
the Greek and Roman republics maintained the martial spirit of their
respective citizens. They facilitated the acquisition of those exercises,
by appointing a certain place for learning and practising them, and by
granting to certain masters the privilege of teaching in that place. Those
masters do not appear to have had either salaries or exclusive privileges
of any kind. Their reward consisted altogether in what they got from their
scholars; and a citizen, who had learnt his exercises in the public
gymnasia, had no sort of legal advantage over one who had learnt them
privately, provided the latter had learned them equally well. Those
republics encouraged the acquisition of those exercises, by bestowing
little premiums and badges of distinction upon those who excelled in them.
To have gained a prize in the Olympic, Isthmian, or Nemaean games, gave
illustration, not only to the person who gained it, but to his whole
family and kindred. The obligation which every citizen was under, to serve
a certain number of years, if called upon, in the armies of the republic,
sufficiently imposed the necessity of learning those exercises, without
which he could not be fit for that service.

That in the progress of improvement, the practice of military exercises,
unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to
decay, and, together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the
people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the
security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the
martial spirit of the great body of the people. In the present times,
indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined
standing army, would not, perhaps, be sufficient for the defence and
security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a
soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit,
besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty,
whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing
army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against
a foreign invader; so it would obstruct them as much, if unfortunately
they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state.

The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more
effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the
people, than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern
times. They were much more simple. When they were once established, they
executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from
government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. Whereas to
maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any
modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of
government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect
and disuse. The influence, besides, of the ancient institutions, was much
more universal. By means of them, the whole body of the people was
completely instructed in the use of arms; whereas it is but a very small
part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any
modern militia, except, perhaps, that of Switzerland. But a coward, a man
incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one
of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much
mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is
either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use
of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two;
because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must
necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated
or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the
martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the
society, yet, to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and
wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading
themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the
most serious attention of government; in the same manner as it would
deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other
loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from
spreading itself among them; though, perhaps, no other public good might
result from such attention, besides the prevention of so great a public
evil.

The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity which, in
a civilized society, seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of
all the inferior ranks of people. A man without the proper use of the
intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than
even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more
essential part of the character of human nature. Though the state was to
derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people,
it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether
uninstructed. The state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from
their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are
to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant
nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and
intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an
ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more
respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful
superiors, and they are, therefore, more disposed to respect those
superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing
through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition; and they are,
upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary
opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the
safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which
the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest
importance, that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or
capriciously concerning it.

Art. III.—Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Instruction of
People of all Ages.

The institutions for the instruction of people of all ages, are chiefly
those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction, of
which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this
world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in the life to
come. The teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the
same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their
subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may
derive it from some other fund, to which the law of their country may
entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tythe or land tax, an established
salary or stipend. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to
be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. In this
respect, the teachers of a new religion have always had a considerable
advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems, of which the
clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up
the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people; and
having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable
of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own
establishment. The clergy of an established and well endowed religion
frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the
virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of
gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and
bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of
people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and
establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of
popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel
themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full
fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the
active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the north. Such a clergy, upon such
an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil
magistrate to persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as
disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman catholic clergy
called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants, and the
church of England to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every
religious sect, when it has once enjoyed, for a century or two, the
security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making
any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its
doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions, the advantage, in point of
learning and good writing, may sometimes be on the side of the established
church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes,
are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England, those arts have
been long neglected by the well endowed clergy of the established church,
and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the
methodists. The independent provisions, however, which in many places have
been made for dissenting teachers, by means of voluntary subscriptions, of
trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated
the zeal and activity of those teachers. They have many of them become
very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general
ceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, without half the
learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue.