Chapter XIV: A Defensive Chapter

Our programme for the third scholastic year (1903–4) was as follows:—

To promote the progressive evolution of childhood by avoiding all
anachronistic practices, which are merely obstacles placed by the
past to any real advance towards the future, is, in sum, the
predominant aim of the Modern School. Neither dogmas nor systems,
moulds which confine vitality to the narrow exigencies of a
transitory form of society, will be taught. Only solutions approved
by the facts, theories accepted by reason, and truths confirmed by
evidence, shall be included in our lessons, so that each mind shall
be trained to control a will, and truths shall irradiate the
intelligence, and, when applied in practice, benefit the whole of
humanity without any unworthy and disgraceful exclusiveness.

Two years of success are a sufficient guarantee to us. They prove,
in the first place, the excellence of mixed education, the
brilliant result—the triumph, we would almost say—of an elementary
common sense over prejudice and tradition. As we think it
advisable, especially that the child may know what is happening
about it, that physical and natural science and hygiene should be
taught, the Modern School will continue to have the services of Dr.
de Buen and Dr. Vargas. They will lecture on alternate Sundays,
from eleven to twelve, on their respective subjects in the
school-room. These lectures will complete and further explain the
classes in science held during the week.

It remains only to say that, always solicitous for the success of
our work of reform, we have enriched our scholastic material by the
acquisition of new collections which will at once assist the
understanding and give an attractiveness to scientific knowledge;
and that, as our rooms are now not large enough for the pupils, we
have acquired other premises in order to have more room and give a
favourable reply to the petitions for admission which we have
received.

The publication of this programme attracted the attention of the reactionary press, as I said. In order to give them a proof of the logical strength of the position of the Modern School, I inserted the following article in the Bulletin:—

Modern pædagogy, relieved of traditions and conventions, must raise
itself to the height of the rational conception of man, the actual
state of knowledge, and the consequent ideal of mankind. If from
any cause whatever a different tendency is given to education, and
the master does not do his duty, it would be just to describe him
as an impostor; education must not be a means of dominating men for
the advantage of their rulers. Unhappily, this is exactly what
happens. Society is organised, not in response to a general need
and for the realisation of an ideal, but as an institution with a
strong determination to maintain its primitive forms, defending
them vigorously against every reform, however reasonable it may be.

This element of immobility gives the ancient errors the character
of sacred beliefs, invests them with great prestige and a dogmatic
authority, and arouses conflicts and disturbances which deprive
scientific truths of their due efficacy or keep them in suspense.
Instead of being enabled to illumine the minds of all and realise
themselves in institutions and customs of general utility, they are
unhappily restricted to the sphere of a privileged few. The effect
is that, as in the days of the Egyptian theocracy, there is an
esoteric doctrine for the cultivated and an exoteric doctrine for
the lower classes—the classes destined to labour, defence, and
misery.

On this account we set aside the mystic and mythical doctrine, the
domination and spread of which only befits the earlier ages of
human history, and embrace scientific teaching, according to its
evidence. This is at present restricted to the narrow sphere of the
intellectuals, or is at the most accepted in secret by certain
hypocrites who, so that their position may not be endangered, make
a public profession of the contrary. Nothing could make this absurd
antagonism clearer than the following parallel, in which we see the
contrast between the imaginative dreams of the ignorant believer
and the rational simplicity of the scientist:—

THE BIBLE. ANTHROPISM.

The Bible contains the annals of One of the main supports of the the heavens, the earth, and the reactionary system is what we may human race; like the Deity call “anthropism.” I designate by himself, it contains all that was, this term that powerful and is, and will be. On its first page world-wide group of erroneous we read of the beginning of time opinions which opposes the human and of things, and on its last organism to the whole of the rest page the end of time and of of nature, and represents it as things. It begins with Genesis, the preordained end of organic which is an idyll, and ends with creation, an entity essentially Revelation, which is a funeral distinct from it, a god-like chant. Genesis is as beautiful as being. Closer examination of this the fresh breeze which sweeps over group of ideas shows it to be made the world; as the first dawn of up of three different dogmas, light in the heavens; as the first which we may distinguish as the flower that opens in the meadows; anthropocentric, the as the first word of love spoken anthropomorphic, and the by men; as the first appearance of anthropolatrous. the sun in the east. Revelation is as sad as the last palpitation of 1. The anthropocentric dogma nature; as the last ray of the culminates in the idea that man is sun; as the last breath of a dying the preordained centre and aim of man. And between the funeral chant all terrestrial life—or, in a and the idyll there pass in wider sense, of the whole succession before the eyes of God universe. As this error is all generations and all peoples. extremely conducive to man’s The tribes and the patriarchs go interest, and as it is intimately by; the republics and the connected with the creation-myth magistrates; the monarchies and of the three great Mediterranean their kings; the empires and their religions, and with the dogmas of emperors. Babylon and all its the Mosaic, Christian, and abominations go by; Nineveh and Mohammedan theologies, it still all its pomps; Memphis and its dominates the greater part of the priests; Jerusalem and its civilised world. prophets and temple; Athens and its arts and heroes; Rome and its 2. The anthropomorphic dogma, diadem of conqueror of the world. also, is connected with the Nothing lasts but God; all else creation-myth of the three passes and dies, like the froth aforesaid religions and of many that tips the wave. others. It likens the creation and control of the world by God to the artificial creation of an able engineer or mechanic, and to the A prodigious book, which mankind administration of a wise ruler. began to read three and thirty God, as creator, sustainer, and centuries ago, and of which, if it ruler of the world, is thus read all day and night, it would represented after a purely human not exhaust the wealth. A fashion in his thought and work. prodigious book in which all was Hence it follows that man in turn calculated before the science of is god-like. “God made man to his arithmetic was invented; in which own image and likeness.” The the origin of language is told older, naive theology is pure without any knowledge of “homotheism,” attributing human philology; in which the shape, flesh, and blood to the revolutions of the stars are gods. It is more intelligible than described without any knowledge of the modern mystic theosophy which astronomy; in which history is adores a personal God as an recorded without any documents of invisible—properly speaking, history; in which the laws of gaseous—being, yet makes him nature are unveiled without any think, speak, and act in human knowledge of physics. A prodigious fashion; it offers us the book, that sees everything and paradoxical picture of a gaseous knows everything; that knows the vertebrate. thoughts hidden in the hearts of men and those in the mind of God; 3. The anthropolatric dogma that sees what is happening in the naturally results from this abysses of the sea and in the comparison of the activity of God bowels of the earth; that records and man; it ends in the apotheosis or foretells all the catastrophes of human nature. A further result of nations, and in which are is the belief in the personal accumulated all the treasures of immortality of the soul, and the mercy, of justice, and of dualistic dogma of the twofold vengeance. A book, in fine, which, nature of man, whose “immortal” when the heavens are folded like a soul is conceived as the temporary gigantic fan, and the earth sinks, inhabitant of a mortal frame. Thus and the sun withdraws its light, these three anthropistic dogmas, and the stars are extinguished, variously adapted to the will remain with God, because it respective professions of the is his eternal word, echoing for different religions, came at ever in the heights. [8] length to be vested with extraordinary importance, and proved to be the source of the most dangerous errors. [9]

In face of this antagonism, maintained by ignorance and
self-interest, positive education, which proposes to teach truths
that issue in practical justice, must arrange and systematise the
established results of natural research, communicate them to
children, and thus prepare the way for a more equitable state of
society, in which, as an exact expression of sociology, it must
work for the benefit of all as well as of the individual. Moses, or
whoever was the author of Genesis, and all the dogmatisers, with
their six days of creation out of nothing after the Creator has
passed an eternity in doing nothing, must give place to Copernicus,
who showed the revolution of the planets round the sun; to Galileo,
who proclaimed that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of the
planetary universe; to Columbus and others who, believing the earth
to be a sphere, set out in search of other peoples, and gave a
practical basis to the doctrine of human brotherhood; to Linnæus
and Cuvier, the founders of natural history; to Laplace, the
inventor of the established cosmogony; to Darwin, the author of the
evolutionary doctrine, which explains the formation of species by
natural selection; and to all who, by means of observation and
experiment, have discredited the supposed revelation, and tell us
the real nature of the universe, the earth, and life.

Against the evils engendered by generations sunk in ignorance and
superstition, from which so many are now delivered, only to fall
into an anti-social scepticism, the best remedy, without excluding
others, is to instruct the rising generation in purely humanist
principles and in the positive and rational knowledge provided by
science. Women educated thus will be mothers in the true sense of
the word, not transmitters of traditional superstitions; they will
teach their children integrity of life, the dignity of life, social
solidarity, instead of a medley of outworn and sterile dogmas and
submission to illegitimate hierarchies. Men thus emancipated from
mystery, miracle, and distrust of themselves and their fellows, and
convinced that they were born, not to die, as the wretched teaching
of the mystics says, but to live, will hasten to bring about such
social conditions as will give to life its greatest possible
development. In this way, preserving the memory of former
generations and other frames of mind as a lesson and a warning, we
will once for all close the religious period, and enter definitely
into that of reason and nature.

In June, 1904, the Bulletin published the following figures in regard to the attendance at school. At that time the publications of the Modern School were in use in thirty-two other schools throughout the country, and its influence was thus felt in Seville and Malaga, Tarragona and Cordova, and other towns, as well as Barcelona and the vicinity. The number of scholars in our schools was also steadily rising, as the following table shows:—

LIST OF THE PUPILS IN THE MODERN SCHOOL DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS.

------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+------------------- | GIRLS. | BOYS. | TOTAL. MONTHS. | | | | 1901-2. 1902-3. 1903-4. | 1901-2. 1902-3. 1903-4.| 1st 2nd 3rd | | | year. year. year. ------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+------------------- Opening day | 12 – – | 18 – – | 30 – – September | 16 23 24 | 23 40 40 | 39 63 64 October | 18 28 43 | 25 40 59 | 43 68 102 November | 21 31 44 | 29 40 59 | 50 71 103 December | 22 31 45 | 30 40 59 | 52 71 104 January | 22 31 47 | 32 44 60 | 54 75 107 February | 23 31 47 | 32 48 61 | 55 79 108 March | 25 33 49 | 34 47 61 | 59 80 110 April | 26 32 50 | 37 48 61 | 63 80 111 May | 30 33 51 | 38 48 62 | 68 81 113 June | 32 34 51 | 38 48 63 | 70 82 114 ------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------