Health and Education | Page 7

divine
discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ
and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at first, as boys begin when
they grumble at their school and their schoolmasters, to lay the blame
on others; to be discontented with their circumstances--the things
which stand around them; and to cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I
had that!" But that way no deliverance lies. That discontent only ends
in revolt and rebellion, social or political; and that, again, still in the
same worship of circumstances--but this time desperate--which ends,

let it disguise itself under what fine names it will, in what the old
Greeks called a tyranny; in which--as in the Spanish republics of
America, and in France more than once--all have become the voluntary
slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one man can
improve his circumstances for him.
But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the slave of
Epaphroditus, Nero's minion--and in what baser and uglier
circumstances could human being find himself?--to find out the secret
of being truly free; namely, to be discontented with no man and no
thing save himself. To say not--"Oh that I had this and that!" but "Oh
that I were this and that!" Then, by God's help--and that heroic slave,
heathen though he was, believed and trusted in God's help--"I will
make myself that which God has shown me that I ought to be and can
be."
Ten thousand a-year, or ten million a-year, as Epictetus saw full well,
cannot mend that vulgar discontent with circumstances, which he had
felt--and who with more right?--and conquered, and despised. For that
is the discontent of children, wanting always more holidays and more
sweets. But I wish my readers to have, and to cherish, the discontent of
men and women.
Therefore I would make men and women discontented, with the divine
and wholesome discontent, at their own physical frame, and at that of
their children. I would accustom their eyes to those precious heirlooms
of the human race, the statues of the old Greeks; to their tender
grandeur, their chaste healthfulness, their unconscious, because perfect,
might: and say--There; these are tokens to you, and to all generations
yet unborn, of what man could be once; of what he can be again if he
will obey those laws of nature which are the voice of God. I would
make them discontented with the ugliness and closeness of their
dwellings; I would make the men discontented with the fashion of their
garments, and still more just now the women, of all ranks, with the
fashion of theirs; and with everything around them which they have the
power of improving, if it be at all ungraceful, superfluous, tawdry,
ridiculous, unwholesome. I would make them discontented with what

they call their education, and say to them--You call the three Royal R's
education? They are not education: no more is the knowledge which
would enable you to take the highest prizes given by the Society of
Arts, or any other body. They are not education: they are only
instruction; a necessary groundwork, in an age like this, for making
practical use of your education: but not the education itself.
And if they asked me, What then education meant? I should point them,
first, I think, to noble old Lilly's noble old 'Euphues,' of three hundred
years ago, and ask them to consider what it says about education, and
especially this passage concerning that mere knowledge which is
now-a- days strangely miscalled education. "There are two principal
and peculiar gifts in the nature of man, knowledge and reason. The
one"--that is reason--"commandeth, and the other"--that is
knowledge--"obeyeth. These things neither the whirling wheel of
fortune can change, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate,
neither sickness abate, nor age abolish." And next I should point them
to those pages in Mr. Gladstone's 'Juventus Mundi,' where he describes
the ideal training of a Greek youth in Homer's days; and say,--There:
that is an education fit for a really civilised man, even though he never
saw a book in his life; the full, proportionate, harmonious educing--that
is, bringing out and developing--of all the faculties of his body, mind,
and heart, till he becomes at once a reverent yet a self-assured, a
graceful and yet a valiant, an able and yet an eloquent personage.
And if any should say to me--"But what has this to do with science?
Homer's Greeks knew no science;" I should rejoin--But they had,
pre-eminently above all ancient races which we know, the scientific
instinct; the teachableness and modesty; the clear eye and quick ear; the
hearty reverence for fact and nature, and for the human body, and mind,
and spirit; for human nature, in a word,