MOZART AND THE TOM-TOM PLAYER. 135 after-dinner trumpet of "glory to the present, the past to the dogs," than to make feeble efforts to wake the world, and be bitten perchance without waking it; but it is impossible to do so. The whole question of right or wrong turns on the kind of material that comes to be manufactured, and whether the manufacturer can, and does, do the work without waste, honestly, and in all cases. The raw material itself is a very artificial product to begin with, and represents faithfully in its fineness or coarseness a long past history. Human minds are not hap-hazard waifs; the infant just born is the heir of congenital conditions of good or evil; and whether those conditions are to be passed on better, or worse, is a very vital question. An example may make this clearer, and illustrate how complex the problem is, even at the very beginning, how great the divergence can be, and what momentous issues depend on meeting the facts fairly, neither shutting the eyes to the truth, nor getting rid of it, or seeming to get rid of it, by hustling it out of sight. Take the case of Mozart as representing typically the perfection of child-life, the best raw material that can come into a trainer's hand. It is possible to imagine exceptional musical ability coming into existence in any nation beneath the sky. Even the most savage tribe might have, and very likely does have, its gifted 136 TO EVERY LOCK ITS OWN KEY. genius, its greatest master of sound, born to it. But what is he? He merely represents a new phase of tom-toms, an advance on the rude melodies of his fathers. But a Mozart, who at five, and seven years of age, can play, and compose the noble and refined harmonies of modern music, has born within him the living spirit of generations of genius and skill, and begins life with natural powers of a different order from those of the musical savage. Mozart, and the tom-tom player, practically represent the extremes of good and bad material between which the work of the practical worker lies. As this is the case it is easy to see how useless it would be to come forward, and elaborate a scheme of education out of the inner consciousness in the blissful hallucination that nothing had to be considered but what books should be used by classes consisting of intelligent Mozarts. Brainspinners, who have never taught a child, might just as well go to bed and dream, and publish their dreams, as prescribe what should be taught, and how, in total ignorance of the problems to be solved in teaching a child. St Augustine hit the point, when he said of teaching, "a golden key which does not fit the lock is useless, a wooden key, which does, is everything." He might have added with advantage, FINERY WARNED OFF. 137 that using one big key for all locks is idiotic. The key that fits the lock, whatever may be the popular idea, or the action of Government, or the talk of philosophers, is the question of the day. Those who care for this will not despise the wooden key, because it is wooden. The true teacher has to fit himself to the mind he is teaching, not the pupil to fit himself to the teacher, when the question is taken from the teacher's point of view. The kind of lock and the wooden key that fits come first, according to St Augustine. These pages however commonplace, or unlovely, are, as far as they are anything, locksmith's work. Those who want gold and glitter must go elsewhere. They are addressed to practical workers. For the rest, if any like them not, let Aristotle answer ἀκουσάτω τῶν Ἡσιόδου, οὗτος μὲν πανάριστος ὃς αὐτὸς πάντα νοήσῃ, CHAPTER II. THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING. The Raw Material, Structure, Teaching. THE question of the teacher's work at any given moment depends entirely on those he has to teach. And the capacity of those he has to teach depends, as has been shown, on the work of preceding generations, and the temper of the times in which the teacher lives. It is useless to speculate beforehand. Minds are not like books, which remain the same, and once known, are always known. They are what they are, not what they are imagined to be; and every mind is somewhat different. Apparently, the theory that individual minds have to be treated individually, and the mental powers in every case developed, has not found favour. No traces at all events of such care can be discovered. Examples of splendid intellectual power are not wanting. There is INHERITED FAILURE. 139 abundant evidence of the full mind, and of refined learning, and habits of work imparted to a chosen few. But no sign of the trained mind giving to every one a sense of educated power can be seen. The prevailing feeling of the majority undoubtedly is not a feeling of elasticity and success: and the majority determine infallibly the atmosphere in which men live, and the temper in which the daily life moves, and meets the day's demands. Generations which get nothing, though much is gone through, are not only ignorant; that is a fault easily remedied, but every successive generation of much enduring failures, or partial failures, passes on a more confirmed unreadiness to take the trouble of trying to learn. Not ignorance, but unteachableness, is the evil transmitted by bad or imperfect measures; not a mere vacuum of no music, but a tom-tom nature, is the inheritance of perpetual tom-toms. A most amusing, a most melancholy chapter might be written to prove the tom-tom condition in which the bulk of the material first comes to hand, the utter absence of any foundation of real interest, or belief, combined with complete vegetating power of contented acquiescence in thinking and doing nothing. So they begin; then a large proportion goes on, passing a squatter's life, mere vagabonds, and strangers, in whatever part of the great wilderness of knowledge |