An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

excite some emulation

among different colleges. A regulation, on the contrary, which

prohibited even the independent members of every particular

college from leaving it, and going to any other, without leave

first asked and obtained of that which they meant to abandon,

would tend very much to extinguish that emulation.

 

If in each college, the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct

each student in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily

chosen by the student, but appointed by the head of the college ;

and if, in case of neglect, inability, or bad usage, the student

should not be allowed to change him for another, without leave

first asked and obtained ; such a regulation would not only tend

very much to extinguish all emulation among the different tutors

of the same college, but to diminish very much, in all of them,

the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective

pupils. Such teachers, though very well paid by their

students, might be as much disposed to neglect them, as those who

are not paid by them at all or who have no other recompense but

their salary.

 

If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an

unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing to

his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or

what is very little better than nonsense. It must, too, be

unpleasant to him to observe, that the greater part of his

students desert his lectures ; or perhaps, attend upon them with

plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. If he is

obliged, therefore, to give a certain number of lectures, these

motives alone, without any other interest, might dispose him to

take some pains to give tolerably good ones. Several different

expedients, however, may be fallen upon, which will effectually

blunt the edge of all those incitements to diligence. The

teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils himself the science

in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some book upon

it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language,

by interpreting it to them into their own, or, what would give

him still less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and

by now and then making an occasional remark upon it, he may

flatter himself that he is giving a lecture. The slightest

degree of knowledge and application will enable him to do this,

without exposing himself to contempt or derision, by saying any

thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The

discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to

force all his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham

lecture, and to maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour

during the whole time of the performance.

 

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general

contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the

interest, or, more properly speaking, for the ease of the

masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority

of the master, and, whether he neglects or performs his duty, to

oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he

performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to

presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the

greatest weakness and folly in the other. Where the masters,

however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, I

believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect

theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance

upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well

known wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint

may, no doubt, be in some degree requisite, in order to oblige

children, or very young boys, to attend to those parts of

education, which it is thought necessary for them to acquire

during that early period of life ; but after twelve or thirteen

years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or

restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of

education. Such is the generosity of the greater part of young

men, that so far from being disposed to neglect or despise the

instructions of their master, provided he shews some serious

intention of being of use to them, they are generally inclined to

pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the performance of his

duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a good deal

of gross negligence.

 

Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for the teaching

of which there are no public institutions, are generally the best

taught. When a young man goes to a fencing or a dancing school,

he does not, indeed, always learn to fence or to dance very well;

but he seldom fails of learning to fence or to dance. The good

effects of the riding school are not commonly so evident. The

expense of a riding school is so great, that in most places it is

a public institution. The three most essential parts of literary

education, to read, write, and account, it still continues to be

more common to acquire in private than in public schools; and it

very seldom happens, that anybody fails of acquiring them to the

degree in which it is necessary to acquire them.

 

In England, the public schools are much less corrupted than the

universities. In the schools, the youth are taught, or at least

may be taught, Greek and Latin; that is, everything which the

masters pretend to teach, or which it is expected they should

teach. In the universities, the youth neither are taught, nor

always can find any proper means of being taught the sciences,

which it is the business of those incorporated bodies to teach.

The reward of the schoolmaster, in most cases, depends

principally, in some cases almost entirely, upon the fees or

honoraries of his scholars. Schools have no exclusive privileges.

In order to obtain the honours of graduation, it is not necessary

that a person should bring a certificate of his having studied a

certain number of years at a public school. If, upon examination,

he appears to understand what is taught there, no questions are

asked about the place where he learnt it.

 

The parts of education which are commonly taught in universities,

it may perhaps be said, are not very well taught. But had it not

been for those institutions, they would not have been commonly

taught at all; and both the individual and the public would have

suffered a good deal from the want of those important parts of

education.

 

The present universities of Europe were originally, the greater

part of them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the

education of churchmen. They were founded by the authority of the

pope; and were so entirely under his immediate protection, that

their members, whether masters or students, had all of them what

was then called the benefit of clergy, that is, were exempted

from the civil jurisdiction of the countries in which their

respective universities were situated, and were amenable only to

the ecclesiastical tribunals. What was taught in the greater part

of those universities was suitable to the end of their

institution, either theology, or something that was merely

preparatory to theology.

 

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 requsite to a churchman, the study of them did not

for along 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 a

gency 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