Education Targets and Themes in Various Decades of the Victorian Age

One of the main concerns of the Victorian age was education. It is important to follow in various
decades the targets and themes of the most important Victorian teachers: Thomas Carlyle, John Henry
Newman, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, to understand the evolution of the targets and themes and
the change of paradigm introduced by Oscar Wilde when he wrote about “The Soul of Man under
Socialism” (in 1891, sixty years after Carlyle, forty years after Newman and Mill) . While the targets and
themes of the first two integrate them in the old liberal paradigm (since they appealed to the infinity in
man’s soul and to disinterested contemplation for educating human virtue and for guiding every person
to the good life, through renunciation and the highest aspirations), the targets and themes of John Stuart
Mill’s modern liberal education concerned the creation of a civic society abiding by the same rules and
principles rationally understood by every individual for himself (or herself) and for securing the public
good understood as the democratic well-being.

In Matthew Arnold’s views on education the old and the new liberal targets and themes were obviously
mixed when he propounded, in Discourses in America (1891, and the essay “Science and Education”) the
existence of four powers common to all men.

Arnold attempted to extend to the majority of mankind his cultural model by advocating the
transformation into personally acquired powers the Enlightenment faculties (reason, emotion,
imagination or pathos and will). The faculties were common to all men and made them
universally equal, but powers were the result of personal maturation and the responsibility of
each individual. Writing late in life, in Discourses in America, and particularly in the essay
“Literature and Science” Arnold contributed the names of four powers which he thought should
go into the building of “the industrious modern community….the really useful and working part
of the community”)

- the power of conduct

- the power of intellect and knowledge

- the power of beauty

- the power of social life and manners

–At present it seems to me that those who are for giving to natural knowledge, as they call it [i.e., to
positive sciences, our note] the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind, leave one
important thing out of their account: the constitution of human nature (….) [These, the people who are for
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giving to natural knowledge the chief place] –can hardly deny that (…) the powers which go to the building
up of human life (…) are the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty,
and the power of social life and manners (…) Human nature is built up by these powers; we have the
need for them all. When we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them all, we shall then be in a fair
way for getting soberness and righteousness, with wisdom.– (OAEL p. 1047).1

Though of all the spiritual powers advocated in the old liberal paradigm only “the power of beauty”
remains in Arnold’s catalogue of personal and at the same time social virtues, the last words of the above
quotation recall Cardinal John Henry Newman’s definition of education (in his discourses delivered on the
occasion of his opening the Catholic University in Dublin, in 1853 – as its Rector):

–it is more correct, as well as more usual, to speak of a University as a place of education, than
of instruction, though, when knowledge is concerned , instruction would at first sight have seemed the
more appropriate word. We are instructed, for instance, in manual exercises, in the fine and useful arts,
in trades, and in ways of business; for these are methods, which have little or no effect upon the mind
itself, are confined in rules committed to memory, to tradition or to use, and bear upon an end external
to themselves. But education is a higher word; it implies an action upon our mental nature, and the
formation of a character; it is something individual and permanent, and is commonly spoken of in
connection with religion and virtue–

–[ a university is ] A seat of learning, considered as a place of education. An assemblage of

learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse
and for the sake of intellectual peace to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective
subjects of investigation. Thus is created –a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which each student
also breathes, though in his own case he can only pursue a few sciences out of the multitude. He profits
by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of
subjects. (…) He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of
its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little as he otherwise cannot apprehend them.
Hence it is that his education is called –liberal–. A habit of mind is formed which lasts throughout life, of
which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom.– (PEV I, p. 337).

1
This is a quotation from Contributions I, the section 9.5.1., titled “Education and Humanism”, where OAEL stands
for The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, volume II (general editor Frank Kermode).
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 On the other hand, Arnold’s idea that it is man’s responsibility to develop into powers his
faculties evokes the battle for the individual’s maturity with rational means advocated by the brilliant
proponent of the modern liberal education by John Stuart Mill.

Nobody denies that people should be so taught and trained in youth as to know
and benefit by the ascertained results of human experience. But it is the
privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his
faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way. It is for him to find out
what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his own circumstances
and character.

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental

activity, and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He
who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice. He gains no
practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral,
like the muscular, powers are improved only by being used. The faculties are
called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others believe it.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him
has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who
chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties. He must use
observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather
materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided,
firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.

The change of paradigm introduced by Oscar Wilde at the end of the Victorian age is due to his setting all
human hopes on the abolition of property. His most radical brand of socialism (utopian socialism) linked
personal well-being to the freedom of the soul.

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly,
the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others
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which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact,
scarcely anyone at all escapes. […]The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy
and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves
surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable
that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more
quickly than man’s intelligence;

Wilde’s new faith is anthropocentric and egocentric, at the same time, trying to liberate the
individual from obligations to others. He speaks of “exaggerated altruism”, where Carlyle spoke of
renunciation, which proves how far Victorians had got from Carlyle’s teachings at the end of the
century. However, it is obvious that Oscar Wilde rejected precisely the same kind of things that
Carlyle wished to improve in the ill-administered society where the only links among people in
society at large were material ones (see his challenging of Mammonism and of the work-relations
that limited the interest of the capitalist entrepreneur for the life of his people (remember the
quotation from Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present about the contract which bound workers to
their employers by poor pay).

Wilde envisaged Socialism as a switch from ugly to beautiful modern life:

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens
and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible
and absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on
the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work,
tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms,
or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a
night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and
happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.

Wilde also thought that it was necessary to work on the interiority of people so as to develop
individualism :

But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed.
What is needed is Individualism. […] it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will
develop itself.

Wilde’s cult of joy is at the other extreme from Carlyle’s blessedness to be achieved through
renunciation. On the contrary, individualism believes that hedonism will enhance individuality
and turn it into a personal asset superior to wisdom.

On the other hand, it can be noticed that there are common points between Carlyle’s harsh critique of
capitalist barbarism and Wilde’s utopian socialist targets.

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 Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and
there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to
do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our
property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which
does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown
out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving.
The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred
times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance,
a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every
one would benefit by it.

Compare this to an excerpt from Carlyle’s “Signs of the Times”, written in 1829.

Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, 
Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward
and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of 
adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest 
operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all 
discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, 
inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster. The sailor furls his 
sail, and lays [100/101] down his oar; and bids a strong, unwearied servant, on vaporous wings, bear him through the waters. 
Men have crossed oceans by steam; the Birmingham Fire­king has visited the fabulous East; […]There is no end to machinery. 
Even the horse is stripped of his harness, and finds a fleet fire­horse invoked in his stead. Nay, we have an artist that hatches 
chickens by steam; the very brood­hen is to be superseded! For all earthly, and for some unearthly purposes, we have machines 
and mechanic furtherances; for mincing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep. We remove mountains, and make seas 
our smooth highways; nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious,
and loaded with spoils.[…] Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. 
Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its 
cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery. Thus we have machines for
Education: Lancastrian machines; Hamiltonian machines; monitors, maps and emblems. Instruction, that mysterious communing 
of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an indefinable tentative process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual
variation of means and methods, to attain the same end; but a secure, universal, straightforward business, to be conducted in the 
gross, by proper mechanism, with such intellect as comes to hand. Then, we have Religious machines, of all imaginable varieties;

Just as Carlyle’s proto-socialism (the critique of modern capitalism, of the indifferent and greedy
entrepreneurs and of the non-interventionist state which favoured the free market), Utopian socialism
rejected the ugliness of modern life and capitalist relationships that kept society together and taught the
virtues of individualism to counteract the effects of capitalism.

But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less dependent on
the existence of private property for its development, will benefit by the abolition of
such private property. […]the recognition of private property has really harmed
Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he
possesses. […]man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know
that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man
has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up
an Individualism that is false.[… For example] the English law has always treated
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offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences against his
person, and property is still the test of complete citizenship. […] Man will kill
himself by overwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the
enormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One’s regret is
that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a
groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and
delightful in him – in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of
living. […]With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful,
healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the
symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most
people exist, that is all.

When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no

demand for it; it will cease to exist.