Education: How Old The New Part 6

The most important feature of this education remains to be spoken of, however. It consisted of the fine development and occupation of the mind that came from this system. Men found happiness in their work. In a population of less than 3,000,000 of people many thousands of workmen, engaged in building these magnificent monuments of that old time, reaped a blessed pleasure in the doing of beautiful things.

They, too, had a share in the great monument of which their town was worthily proud and the opportunity to make something worth while for it. Instead of idly envying others they devoted themselves to making whatever their contribution might be as beautiful as possible. It might be only the hinges for the doors or the latch for the gates, it might be only the stonework for the bases of pillars, though it might be the beautiful decoration of their capitals; but everything was being done beautifully and an artist hand was required everywhere. Men must have tried over and over again to make such fine things. They were not done at haphazard nor at one trial. There must have been many a spoiled piece {162} rejected, not so much by the foreman as by the critical, educated taste of the workmen themselves who were able to make such beautiful things. Men who could make such artistic products must have labored much and begun over and over again. This must have made the finest occupation of mind that a great ma.s.s of people has ever had in all the world's history.

American millionaires model the gates of their parks and the grille doors of their palaces under the wise direction of modern architects who fortunately know enough to follow the designs created by these village workmen of the olden time. Modern palatial residences are glad to have samples of the wood-carving of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as models for their decoration, and as attractive pieces around which present-day work may be done. We have to import our workmen, even our large cities cannot supply all that we want of them, and yet little towns of a few thousand inhabitants had them in sufficient abundance in the olden time to enable them to make every portion of their great monumental buildings, cathedrals, abbeys, universities, castles and town halls beautiful in every way. This represents the triumph of a technical training afforded by the gilds of workmen of the olden time. We have to insist on this because our present generation has been so sure that ours was the first generation that gave any serious attention to the education of the ma.s.ses, that it is important to show by {163} contrast how much of a mistake we have made and how well an older generation accomplished its purpose.

The chapter of the "Lost Arts" might well be told with regard to this old time. They had secrets in gla.s.s-making which were the tradition of the teaching of particular gilds that we have been unable to find again in the modern time. There is a jewel-like l.u.s.tre to their colors that is sometimes simply marvellous in its depth and purity. At Lincoln the contrast between old and new gla.s.s can be seen very well.

The old windows of the thirteenth century time were stoned out by the Parliamentarians when they captured the town, because forsooth they could have no such idolatry as that in their presence. The old s.e.xton, who as man and boy for over sixty years had lived his life under the beautiful tints of the old gla.s.s, now saw it scattered upon the floor in fragments. He could not part with it thus and so he gathered it up into bags, broken to pieces though it was, and hid it away in the crypt. In the nineteenth century when they were restoring the cathedral they found these fragments of the old windows. They pieced them together and they proved to be so beautiful that, though they could not fit them as they were in the olden time, at least they succeeded in making a beautiful patchwork of colored gla.s.s.

Over on the other side of Lincoln Cathedral they then placed some new windows of the {164} modern time. These were made in France, I believe. They were made about the middle of the nineteenth century, when stained-gla.s.s making was almost at its lowest ebb. They were considered to be very beautiful, however, and something like 20,000 sterling was paid for them. The contrast between the two sets of windows is very striking. The old windows are so beautiful, the new ones are so commonplace. The visitor, even though he knows nothing about art, notices the contrast and, if he has an eye for color, views with something of a shock this attempt of the nineteenth century to do something that had been so well done by the gild-trained workmen of the technical schools of the Middle Ages. Though they are represented here only by patched fragments of their work he can scarcely repress a smile at the effect of their work in cheapening the modern. Everywhere it is the same way. Mr. F. Rolfe, writing from Venice, where he has been studying thirteenth-century gla.s.s, and talking of its wonderful beauty as compared to anything modern, says: "There are also fragments of two windows, pieced together and the missing parts filled in with the best which modern Murano can do. These show the celebrated Beroviero Ruby Gla.s.s (secret lost) of marvellous depth and brilliancy in comparison with which the modern work is merely watery. (The ancient is just like a decanter of port wine.)"

This is the story, no matter where one goes, {165} throughout Europe.

At York they would not surrender the town to the Parliamentary army until a guarantee had been given them that their cathedral would not be devastated as had been the case elsewhere. Besides General Ireton was a friend of the Yorkists and he was ready to agree to the stipulation. The agreement was not fully carried out, fanatic soldiers could not be entirely restrained, but some of the old gla.s.s remains.

There is probably nothing more beautiful in all the realm of artistic gla.s.s-making than the famous Five Sisters window at York. In France the Revolution repeated what the Puritans accomplished of ruin in England. Notre Dame has no trace of its old gla.s.s. In some of the cathedrals, however, there has fortunately been preserved for us enough of it to know how wonderfully the makers of it must have been trained, and to let us realize how much of experiment, of investigation, of study that we would now call applied chemistry must have gone to the making of this wonderful old gla.s.s. These technical schools were not merely pa.s.sing on arts and crafts traditions, but each generation was adding to the secrets of the gilds by original research of its own. We are p.r.o.ne to think that such work of original investigation was reserved for our time, but that is only because of the foolish self-complacency which blinds us to what other generations did.

The stained gla.s.s of the cathedrals of Bourges {166} and of Chartres shows the marvellous success of these old workers in gla.s.s and their power to make enduring products. It is a mystery to see how their blues have lasted while the sun has shone through them all these years and caused no deterioration or only such as softens and adds to beauty but not really causes to fade. Blue had to be used in great profusion on the windows because the symbolism of color was well determined and blue stood for the virtue of purity and was the Blessed Virgin's color. It had to come in, therefore, on nearly all occasions. Usually by irradiation blue causes surrounding colors to lose something of their tint, and by contrast often spoils what would ordinarily be expected to prove beautiful color effects. These old workmen had found the secret of using it in such a way as not thus to spoil surrounding colors, not to permit it to be too a.s.sertive, yet we have wonderful enduring blues that have come down to us practically unchanged through all these centuries. Where the workmen of the old time set themselves producing pure color effects, their windows look like jewels and coruscate in the light of the setting sun--for their most charming effects were particularly obtained in the west windows--with a glorious beauty that has appealed to every generation since.

It was not alone in the building trades, however, that these fine things were accomplished. Bookmaking reached a degree of perfection that {167} has never been excelled. Humphreys, the authority on illuminated books, declares that the ma.n.u.script volumes of the thirteenth century, illuminated as they are by the patient labor and the finely developed taste of this time, are the most beautiful ever made. We have one example of the thirteenth-century illuminated book in the Lenox Library in New York for which, I believe, the museum authorities were quite willing to pay some $18,000, and it is worth much more than that now, for it is a wondrously beautiful example of the illuminations of the time. Like the gla.s.smakers, these bookmakers had secrets that have been lost, and that we with all our knowledge of science and of art in the modern time, or at least our fondly complacent notion of our knowledge of art and science, are unable to find the formulas for. They used blues in their illuminating work that have never faded, though blues are so p.r.o.ne to fade on parchment. They managed their blues in wonderful way and they still are as fresh and as undisturbing of the harmony of other colors as in the long ago.

They could burnish gold and it stays as bright as when it was first applied to the leaves, even after seven centuries. We have lost the art of burnis.h.i.+ng gold in such applied work and ours becomes dull after a time.

Nor was this teaching of technics confined only to the men. From this period we have the most beautiful needlework in the world. The famous {168} Cope of Ascoli has recently attracted wide attention. Mr.

Pierpont Morgan purchased it and was willing to pay $60,000 for it, though the jewels that had been on it originally had been removed. His experts a.s.sured him that it was the most beautiful piece of needlework in the world. Afterwards it was found to have been stolen, and so he restored it to the Italian Government, who did not return it to the little convent of Ascoli in North Central Italy, from which it had been stolen and where it was made at the end of the thirteenth century (1284), Elsewhere in Europe they were doing just as charming work with the needle. In fact England, not Italy, was the acknowledged home of it. The English Cope of Cyon is another notable example of needlework from this time. Thirteenth-century work with the needle is famous in the history of the art. It was the product of just the same forces that gave us the wonderful stained gla.s.s. They, too, used colors and applied great art principles to this unpromising mode of expression and accomplished great results. I have had the privilege of seeing the copy of the Cope of Ascoli that was made while in Mr. Morgan's possession, and, like the stained gla.s.s of York or Bourges or Chartres, it is one of the things not likely ever to be forgotten, so beautiful a realization is it of what is best in taste and art.

The supremely interesting feature of this popular education was its effect upon the lives, and {169} minds, and happiness of the workmen.

Men got up to their work in the morning not as to a routine occupation in which they did the same things over and over again, until they were so tired that they could scarcely do them any more, and then came home to rest from fatigue in weariness of mind and of body. But they awoke from sound sleep with the memory that ideas had been coming to them the day before, and especially towards evening that, now with fresh bodies, they might be able to execute better, and that it would surely be a pleasure to work out. They came to their work with an artist's spirit, hopeful that they would be able to express in the material what they saw so clearly with their mind's eye. It was tiresome working but the hours were not long, and always there was the thought of accomplishment worthy of the cathedral or the abbey or the town hall, worthy to be placed beside the masterpieces in the best sense of that dear old word, that their fellow-workmen of the other gilds were accomplis.h.i.+ng around them. They went to bed healthily tired but not weary, sometimes to dream of their work, not as a nightmare, but as something that represented possibilities of accomplishment. When technical schools can lift men up to this plane then, indeed, there is a chance for happiness even for the workmen.

Compare with this for a moment the lot of the modern workman. He goes out in the morning to work that seldom is interesting, that he {170} practically never cares to do only that he must get money enough to support himself and his family, and that requires the frequent repet.i.tion of routine movements until he is weary, body and soul. He must work or starve. He has very little interest in it as a rule, often none at all, and sometimes he is thoroughly disgusted with it.

He must earn money enough to get bread to live to-day so that he shall be able to go and work again tomorrow. And so the humdrum round from day to day with nothing to relieve the prospect until the darkness comes when no man can work. As to dreams of accomplishment or pleasure in his work, as the artist has, there is practically none. He needs must go on, and that is all about it. Is it any wonder that this breeds discontent?

Happy is the man who has found his work. There is only one happiness in this little life of ours and that consists in having work to do that one cares to do, and the chance to do it in such order and with such rewards as make life reasonably pleasant, satisfying from the material side. There are no pleasures in life equal to the joy of the worker in his work when he cares for it. Pleasures are at most but pa.s.sing incidents. The work is what counts. These workmen of the Middle Ages taught in the technical schools of that olden time had chances for happiness, chances that were well taken, such as perhaps no other generation of workmen could have.

Of course it may be said that, after all, there {171} were only opportunities for a few to work at the great architectural monuments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In a sense this is true, but it must not be forgotten that without modern mechanical means and with the slow, patient laborious effort required to raise these huge edifices, much time and many men were required. Besides the cathedrals and the abbeys there were many private castles and town halls, and then in many places the homes of the gilds themselves, some of which, as, for instance, the famous hall of the clothmakers at Ypres, are among the most beautiful monuments of the architecture of that period.

In everything, however, the workmen had a chance to do beautiful work.

In the textile industries this is the time when some of the most beautiful cloth ever made was invented and brought to perfection.

Linen was woven with wonderful skill, satin was invented and brought to perfection, silk brocades of marvellous designs of many kinds were made, threads of gold and silver were introduced into the textures, wonderfully fine effects were studied out and applied in the industries, and just as in the decorative arts so in the arts of cloth-weaving and of many other forms of human endeavor, there was an artistic craftsmans.h.i.+p such as we have lost sight of to a great extent in our age of machinery.

The Irish poet, Yeats, in bidding a group of American friends good-bye some five years ago, said that we had many opportunities for culture {172} in life here in America, but we must be careful to take them fully and not deceive ourselves with counterfeits, or we would surely miss something of the precious privilege and development that might be ours. Among other things he said, that we must not forget "that until the very utensils in the kitchen are useful as well as beautiful no nation can think of itself as really cultured." If men and women can bear without constraint to handle things that are merely useful without beauty in them, there is something seriously lacking in their culture. Whatever is merely useful is hideous. Nature never made anything that was merely useful in all the world's history. The things of nature around us are all wonderful utilities and yet charmingly beautiful. The pretty flowers are seed envelopes meant to attract birds and insects, so that the seeds may be scattered. The beautiful fruits are other seed envelopes meant to attract man and the animals, so that the seeds may be carried far and wide. The leaves of trees are eminently useful as lungs and stomach and yet are beautiful and have a wondrous variety and a charm all their own.

This precious lesson of nature they seem to have understood well in the Middle Ages and applied it with marvellous perfection. It has often been called to attention that portions of Gothic edifices in dark corners, out of the sight of the ordinary visitor, are just as beautifully decorated in their own way as those which are {173} especially on exhibition. The gravestones in their churches, though meant to be trodden under foot and often covered by the dirt from the shoes of pa.s.sersby, yet had bronze ornaments that are so beautiful that in the modern time artists take rubbings of them so as to carry the designs away with them. While every portion of the church is beautiful, the same thing was true in the castles and to a great extent in their own homes. The furniture of that time, even in the houses of smaller tradesmen, was beautiful in its simplicity, its solidity, its charm of line, and then, above all, its absolute rejection of all pretence of seeming to be anything other than it was.

Their drinking cups were beautiful, their domestic utensils of various kinds had charming lines and, though they did not have as many as we have in the modern time, what they had were so beautiful that now we find them on exhibition in museums, and we are beginning to imitate them in order that the wealthy may have as bric-a-brac ornaments in their houses, the utensils which were in ordinary use in the homes of the middle cla.s.ses of the thirteenth century.

There was a satisfaction for the workman in making all these beauteous things. He knew, as a rule, for whom they were to be made. He knew where they were to be placed. He often saw his handiwork afterwards.

His reputation depended on it. There was a happiness then in doing it well, and in taking his time to it, that surpa.s.ses {174} any idle pleasure away from his work, as happiness always surpa.s.ses pleasure.

There was the joy of the doing, and joys we are coming to appreciate mean ever so much more than pleasures. What we want at the present time are more joys and less pleasures. How many men and women were blessed in that time because they had found their work. That is the only real happiness in life. How profusely it was scattered over the mediaeval world.

Almost nothing that was made was of a character that could be done by mere routine. A man had to occupy both mind and body in the making of the textiles, of the kitchen utensils, of the furniture, of the various metal utensils required for houses, and so for nearly everything else. It is the workman who has mere routine work that has opportunity to think about other things and brood over his lot and grow more and more dissatisfied. It is the man who does not have to give his mind to what he is doing, but who while his body grows more and more tired accomplis.h.i.+ng a limited set of constantly repeated movements, may allow his mind to ponder gloomily over his condition, compare it with that of others and grow envious, who has the worst possible seeds of discontent in his occupation.

Men who did this sort of work that required active mental attention, learned to think for themselves. When they had moments of leisure, not having newspapers and superficial shallow books {175} to waste their time on, they did some thinking. Any one who has had a little intimate contact with the old-fas.h.i.+oned artisans, the shoemakers, the harnessmakers, the cabinetmakers who work at benches, the woodcarvers, men who have real trades, knows how often one finds among them a deep, serious thinker with regard to the problems of life around. They do not drink in other people's opinions and then think that they are thinking, because they are able to repeat some formulas of words. Such men are not easily led. They make good jurymen, they have logic; above all, they are thoughtful. There must have been much of this in the old time among the handicraftsmen of the Middle Ages. It is doubtless to this that we owe the fact that these men were gradually organized in many wonderful ways into the basic democracy on which the liberties of the English-speaking people of the world are founded. We shall have much more to say of this in treating of the wonderful fraternal organizations, with solutions for nearly every problem of social need, which these men succeeded in working out for themselves in times considered to have been benighted.

There was another phase of the education of these members of the gilds that is even more interesting because it trenches particularly on the intellectual side of life, the provision of entertainment and solves an important social problem. This was the organization of dramatic {176} performances for the people in which the members of the gilds took part. The stories of the Old Testament and of the New, and of the lives of the Saints, and of various incidents connected with Church history, were worked up into plays and were presented in the various cities. We have the remains of many cycles of these plays. They represent the beginnings of our modern dramatic literature. They were simple and very naive, but they were interesting and they concerned some of the deepest and most beautiful thoughts with which man has ever been concerned. The members of the gilds and their families took part in them. The princ.i.p.al sets of plays were given in the springtime at the various festivals of the Church, so frequent then. Most of the spare time from Christmas on, especially the long hours of the winter evenings, were occupied in preparations of various kinds for these spring dramatic performances. It is impossible to conceive of anything more likely to give people innocent and joyful yet absorbing occupations of mind than these preparations.

Some of the young men and women were chosen as the actors and had to learn their parts and be rehearsing them. Choruses had to be trained, costumes had to be made, some scenery had to be arranged, everything was done by the members of the particular gild for each special portion of the cycle of the play a.s.signed to them. Garments had actually to be manufactured out of the wool, {177} the dyeing of them had to be managed, spangles had to be made for them, there must have been busy occupation of the most interesting kind for many hands. Of course it is easy to say that these naive productions could not have meant very much for the people. Any one who thinks so, however, has had no experience with private theatricals, and above all has never had the opportunity to see how much they mean for the occupation of young folks' minds and the keeping of them out of mischief during the winter months when they are much indoors. When the Jesuits founded their great schools in Europe they laid it down as one of the rules of the inst.i.tute to be observed in all their schools, that plays in certain number should be given every year, partly for the sake of the educational effect of such occupation with dramatic literature, but mainly because of the interest aroused by them and the occupation of mind for young folks which they involve.

As to how much they may mean, perhaps the best way for those of our day to realize it is to take the example of Oberammergau with its great Pa.s.sion Play still given. Here we have a typical instance of a Pa.s.sion play of the olden time maintaining itself. The preparations for it occupy the villagers in their mountain home not for months only, but for years before it is given. It represents the centre of the village life, is the main portion of its activities. The place of a {178} family with regard to the play const.i.tutes its position in the village aristocracy. Something of this must have been true in the gilds of the Middle Ages in these dramatic performances. Just as at Oberammergau nearly every one of the villagers has something to do or is in some way connected with the preparation of the play, so most of the members of the particular gilds and probably their families had some connection with their plays. The children had their interest and curiosity aroused and were allowed to help in their measure, and then when the glorious day of the performance came, there must have been joy in the hearts of all and rejoicing over its success. This is the sort of occupation of mind that we would like to be able to provide for our people in the cities and towns, but circ.u.mstances are such that we cannot.

Those who would think that these old Pa.s.sion and mystery plays meant very little for the people who did not take part in them and, above all, very little for the spectators, in an educational way, forget entirely that this side of the work of the old plays can also be studied at Oberammergau. This little town of 1,400 inhabitants occupies itself for years to such good effect that, when the performances are given crowds flock from all over the world to witness them. When I was there in 1900 I think that I saw the most cosmopolitan gathering that I had ever been in, though I have been to several International {179} Medical Congresses. There were Russians and Poles, and Scandinavians and Americans and Australians, and there stayed in the house with us a little party from Buenos Ayres, and our seat companions in the train were English, who had been born in India, and they pointed out to us some South Africans who had come to see the Pa.s.sion Play. This village of 1,400 inhabitants succeeds in producing actors who are capable of arousing thus the interest of the world, and they have artistic taste enough to mount it well, and they manage their performances in thoroughly dignified fas.h.i.+on, and yet in many ways they have the simplicity and, above all, the dear old simple faith of the mediaeval people from whom they come. This is the best possible evidence that we could have of the place of the old plays in the life of the people.

We have another form of evidence that is extremely interesting. Out of these old mystery plays, dramas of the Nativity and of the Pa.s.sion with the introductions and interludes to these central facts of creation, there developed first the morality plays and then the drama of the modern time. Twice in the history of the world, each time quite independent of the other, the drama has originated anew out of religious ceremonials. In old Greece this is the origin of the drama; in the Middle Ages exactly the same thing happened. Nor was this origin unworthy in any way of the great development that came. Some of the old {180} mystery plays were written with wonderful dramatic insight and with a capacity to bring out dramatic moments that is very admirable. As for the morality plays we have had one of them repeated to us in recent years, "Everyman," and well it has served to show how able was the genius of these old dramatic writers. People of the modern sordid time listened for two hours enraptured and then went away, paying the tribute of silence to this wonderful arrangement of the ideas connected with such a familiar theme as the four last things to be remembered--death, judgment, heaven and h.e.l.l. Fine as is "Everyman," there are some critics who think the "Castle of Perseverance," written about the same time, the latter part of the fifteenth century, an even greater play.

The most important feature of this work in dramatics of the old gilds was not the entertainment, though with what we know of how low entertainment can sink and how much it can mean for degradation, surely that would be sufficient, but the fact that all of the workmen and their families in the towns were occupied with the high thoughts and the beautiful phrases and the uplifting motives and the deep significance of the Bible stories. These are so simple that no one could fail to understand. They are written so close to the heart of human nature that even the simplest child can appreciate their meaning. They are full of the most precious lessons, yet without {181} any of that moralizing that is often so sterile and so characteristic of what we call mere preaching. All the townspeople were occupied for months beforehand with these stories. They got ever closer and closer to the heart of the mystery in them. They got closer thus to the heart of the mystery of life. They were made to feel the presence of the Creator and of Providence while occupying themselves with thoughts that are the essence of deepest poetry. What would one not give to be able to occupy a great number of people, for many hours every winter, with such thoughts, not alone for their moral effect but their real educational value. They did not add useless information to useless information, but they did bring development of mind and, above all, heart. In my book "The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries,"

[Footnote 14] I tell the story of how the various trades gilds in the towns divided these phases of the mystery plays among themselves.

Every one had an opportunity to do something. They were the tanners and the plasterers, the cardmakers and the fullers, the coopers, the armorers, the gaunters and glovers, the s.h.i.+pwrights, the pessners, fishmongers and mariners, the parchment-makers and bookbinders, the hosiers, the spicers, the pewterers and founders, the tylers and smiths, the chandlers, the orfevers, the goldsmiths, the goldbeaters, the money-makers, and then many other trades whose names sound curious to us of {182} the modern time. The bowyers or makers of bows; the fletchers or arrow featherers; the hay-resters or workers in horsehair, the bowlers or bowlmakers, the feystours, makers of saddle-trees; the verrours, glaciers; the dubbers, refurbishers of clothes; the lumniners or illuminators, the scriveners or public writers; the drapers, the mercers; the lorymers or bridle-makers; the spurriers, makers of spurs; the cordwaners; the bladesmiths; the curriers; the scalers, and many others, all had their chances to take part in these old plays.

[Footnote 14: Catholic Summer School Press, New York, 1907.]

They were not being entertained, but were themselves active agents in the doing of things for themselves and for others. This is what brings real contentment with it. Superficial entertainment that occupies the surface of the mind for the moment means very little for real recreation of mind. What men need is to have something that makes them think along lines different to those in which they are engaged in their daily work. This gives real rest. The blood gets away from parts of the brain where it has been all day, flows to new parts, and recreation is the result. Such entertainment, however, must occupy the very centre of interest for the moment and not be something seen in pa.s.sing and then forgotten. The modern psychotherapeutist would say, that no better amus.e.m.e.nt than this could possibly be obtained since it brought real diversion of mind. Above all, we of the modern time who know how vicious, how immoral in its tendencies, how {183} suggestive of all that is evil, how familiarizing with what is worst in men until familiarity begets contempt, commercial entertainment in the shape of dramatics, so-called at least, may be, cannot help but admire and envy and would emulate, if we could, this fine solution of a very pressing social problem that the gilds found in an educational feature that is of surpa.s.sing value.

There are three post-graduate courses in modern life that are quite beyond the control of our educational authorities, though we talk much of our interest and our accomplishments in education. These three have more influence over the people than all of our popular education. They are the newspaper, the library and the theatre. Some of us who know what the library is doing are not at all satisfied with it. We are spending an immense amount of money mainly to furnish the cheapest kind of mere superficial amus.e.m.e.nt to the people of our cities. In so doing we are probably hurting their power of concentration of mind instead of helping it, and it is this concentration of mind that is the best fruit of education. This is, however, another story. Of the newspaper, as we now have it, the less said the better. It is bringing our young people particularly into intimate contact with many of the vicious and brutalizing things of life, the s.e.x crimes, brutal murders and prize-fights, so that uplift and refinement almost become impossible. As for the theatre, no one now thinks of it as {184} educationally valuable. Our plays are such superficial presentations of the life around us that once they have had their run no one thinks of reviving them. This is the better side of the theatre. The worst side is absolutely in the hands of the powers of evil and is confessedly growing worse all the time.

Besides these indirect educational features the gilds encouraged certain formal educational inst.i.tutions that are of great interest, and that have been misunderstood for several centuries until recent years. In many places they maintained grammar schools and these grammar schools were eminently successful in helping to make scholars of such of the sons of the members of the gilds as wanted to lift themselves above their trades into the intellectual life. We know more about the grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon than of any of the others. The reason for this is that we have been interested in the antiquities of Shakespeare's town and the conditions which obtained in it, before as well as during his lifetime. The Gild of the Holy Cross of Stratford maintained a grammar school in which many pupils were educated. That this was not a singular feature of gild work is evident from what we know of many other gilds. These gild schools were suppressed in the reformation time and then later had to be replaced by the so-called Edward VI grammar schools, in one of which it is usually said that Shakespeare was educated. As the English {185} historian Gairdner declared not long since in his "History of the Pre-Reformation Times in England," Edward has obtained a reputation for foundations in charity and in education that he by no means deserved. The schools founded by him particularly were nothing more than re-establishments of popular schools of the olden time whose endowment had been confiscated. The new foundations were makes.h.i.+fts to appease popular clamor.

The old gilds did not believe in devoting all the early years of children to mere book-learning. Some few with special apt.i.tudes for this were provided with opportunities. The rest were educated in various ways at home until their apprentices.h.i.+p to a trade began, and then their real education commenced. Our own experience with education in the early years from six to eight or nine is not particularly favorable. Children who enter school a little later than the legal age graduate sooner and with even higher marks than those who begin at the age of six. This has been shown by statistics in England in many cities. What is learned with so much fuss and worry and bother for the children and the teachers from six to eight, is rapidly picked up in a few months at the age of eight or nine, and then is better a.s.similated. The grammar schools of the gilds took the children about the age of nine or ten and then gave them education in letters. That education, by the way, began at six in the morning and, {186} with two hours of intervals, continued until four in the afternoon. They believed in the eight-hour day for children, but they began it good and early so that artificial light might not const.i.tute a problem.

The best schooling, however, afforded by the gilds, after that in self-help of course, was that in mutual aid. We are establis.h.i.+ng schools of philanthropy in the modern time and we talk much about the organization of charity and other phases of mutual aid. In this as in everything else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our ignorance of things, or at least our gropings after solutions of problems, in long Greek names, which often serve to produce the idea that we know ever so much more about these subjects than we really do. The training in brotherly love and helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school.

Those who think that it is only now that ideas of mutuality in sharing responsibilities, of co-operation and co-ordination of effort for the benefit of all, of community interests, are new, should study Toulmin Smith's work on the gilds, or read Brentano on the foreign gilds.

There is not a phase of our organization of charity in the modern time that was not well antic.i.p.ated by the members of the gilds, and that, too, in ways such as we cannot even hope to rival unless we change the basis on which our helpfulness is founded. Theirs was not a stooping down of supposed better, or so-called upper cla.s.ses, to help the lower, {187} but organization among the people to help themselves so that there was in no sense a pauperization.

Every phase of human need was looked to. We are just beginning to realize our obligations to care for the old, and the last twenty years has seen various efforts on the part of governments to provide old-age pensions. In the Middle Ages according to the laws of the gilds the man who had paid his dues for seven years would then draw a weekly pension equal to something more than five dollars now, for all the rest of his life if he were disabled by injury, or had become incapacitated from old age or illness. Then there were gilds to provide insurance against loss by fire, loss by robbery on land and also on sea, loss by s.h.i.+pwreck, loss even by imprisonment and all other phases of human needs. If the workman were injured his family nursed him during the day but a brother member of the gild, as we have said, was sent to care for him at night, and a good portion of his wages went on, paid to him out of the gild chest. If he died his widow and orphans were cared for by a special pension. The widow did not have to break up the family and send the children to orphan asylums.

There were practically no orphan asylums. The gilds cared for the children of dead members. As the boys grew up special attention was given them so as to provide a trade for them, and they were given earlier opportunities than others to get on in life. {188} The orphans were the favorite children of the gilds, and instead of a child being handicapped by the loss of his parents when he was young, it sometimes happened that he got better opportunities than if his parents lived.

These gilds provided opportunities for social entertainment and friendly intercourse and for such acquaintances.h.i.+p as would afford mutual pleasure and give opportunities for the meeting of the young folks,--sons and daughters of the members of the gild. They had their yearly benefit at which the wives of the members and their sweethearts were supposed by rule to come, and then they had other meetings and social gatherings--picnics in the country in the summer, dances in the winter time and all in a circle where every one knew every one else, and all went well. These are some social features of these gilds educational in the highest sense that we can well envy in the modern time, when we find it so difficult to secure innocent, happy pleasures for young people that will not leave a bad taste in the mouth afterwards. When a member of the gild died his brother members attended the Ma.s.s which was said for him and gave a certain amount in charity that was meant to be applied for his benefit. The whole outlook on life was eminently brotherly. There has never been such a teaching of true fraternity, of the brotherhood of man, of the necessity for mutual aid and then of such practice of it as makes it easy, as among these old gilds.

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The finest result of this teaching is to be seen in the democratic spirit that gradually arose as a consequence of these gilds and their teaching of self-government in all local affairs to the people. The gilds were arranged and organized in the various parishes. These parishes were independent communities for local affairs who had charge of the police system, the health, the road-making, the path-keeping, the boundary-guarding and, in general, the comfort and convenience of the community. The gildsmen, more than any others, were the factors in these parishes. They acc.u.mulated money for the various purposes and had great influence in the development of the community life and the solution of local government problems.

It would be very easy to think that the gilds could not have fulfilled all these duties and subserved all these needs. If we recall, however, that there were 80,000 gilds in England at the end of the fifteenth century, when there were not more than 4,000,000 of people in the whole country, then we can see how much could be accomplished. Alas, at the beginning of the next century all their moneys were confiscated, and because they were Church societies, every one of them requiring attendance at Church duties and at Ma.s.s, as well as at the Ma.s.ses for the dead, but, above all, for the crime of having money in their treasuries at a time when the King needed money and his appet.i.te had been whetted by the spoil of the {190} monasteries and the churches, the gilds were obliterated. Only a few of them in London that had powerful protectors and that escaped on the plea that they were commercial organizations and not religious societies, were able to preserve something of their old-time integrity. These are now so rich that they are the wonder of those who know them. They give us a good idea, however, of the deep foundations that had been established out of the common chest in the purchase of property for these gilds.

In solving the problems of industrial insurance, of providing for the widows and the orphans, of securing annuities when they would be needed, these gilds set us an example that it would be well for us to follow. The insurance money was not acc.u.mulated in such huge sums that it would be a constant temptation for exploitation on the part of officials. It was distributed in comparatively small sums in many thousands of treasuries, and was under the surveillance of those most interested in it. The old-age pensions were not governmental, issued in large numbers and open to inevitable abuses, but were given by those who knew, to those whose necessities were well known.

No wonder that we find democratic government developing co-ordinately with these gilds. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Magna Charta was signed. About the middle of it the first English Parliament met, before the end of it the proper representation of the cities and {191} towns which were mainly controlled by the gilds was secured and during the last quarter of it the English Common Law came into effect so as to secure the rights of all. Bracton's great "Digest of the English Common Law" was written about 1280, and it is still the great sourcebook of the principles of law in English-speaking countries. In many of the States of our Union the Supreme Courts still make their decisions on the basis of the English Common Law, and until a decade or two ago all of them did. The people's rights were secured by the education of the people and the property laws and those for the guardians.h.i.+p of the person and for the prevention of autocratic interference with liberty were all of them put into effect as a consequence of this education in democracy.

This, then, was surely an ideal teaching of the ma.s.ses, a teaching of the arts and crafts, a teaching of mutual aid, a teaching of true fraternity, a teaching of book-learning whenever that was considered necessary or advisable, a teaching of the rights of man and a wonderful development of laws as a consequence, and all of this accomplished not by the upper cla.s.ses, stooping to lift the lower cla.s.ses, but out of the conscious development of the lower cla.s.ses themselves, so that there came a true evolution and not merely a superficial influence from without. If we want to know how to teach the ma.s.ses and to help them to contentment, happiness, occupation of mind, {192} uplifting entertainment, cheerful amus.e.m.e.nt and, above all, to conscious democratic government, here is the model of it as it can be found nowhere else. I commend it to those who are teaching and who, realizing the failure of our modern education in many ways, are looking about for the remedies that will help to make our popular education more efficient.

The soul of this ideal education of the ma.s.ses was the training of character. They had no illusions that the mere imparting of information would make people better nor that the knowing of many things would make them more desirable citizens. Probably they did not consciously reason much about these subjects, but their instincts led them straight. Mr. Edward O. Sisson, writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1910, says that the final question regarding education is whether it avails to produce the type of character required by the republic (nation) and the race. To accomplish this we need to fit our practice to Herbart's great formula that, "the chief business of education is the ethical revelation of the universe." Take any part of this system of education that I have called the ideal education of the ma.s.ses and try it by that standard and see how high its mark will be.

Their handiwork is mainly an act of devotion to the G.o.d of the universe and its products are the most beautiful gifts that ever were offered to him. Cathedral stonework, gla.s.s-work, ironwork, beautiful sacred vessels, handsomest {193} vestments ever made, needlework, lacework, the beautiful setting of the cathedral; what an act of wors.h.i.+p it all was! When it was finished, it belonged to no cla.s.s but to the whole people. It was theirs to be proud of and to wors.h.i.+p in.

Their very amus.e.m.e.nts were often acts of wors.h.i.+p. Their plays concerned the revelations of G.o.d to man, for they were all founded on the Bible, and even for those who may not accept those revelations as divine the fact that the men and women, the ma.s.ses, the handworkmen and the little traders, were for many months in each year engaged with the high ethical thoughts that const.i.tute the greatest contribution to the ethical revelation of the universe that we have in literature, must of itself be an eminently satisfying feature of this old-time education. As regards the Creator, these people were constantly made familiar with Him, His works and ways. Their holidays were holy-days.

They were anniversaries in the life of the G.o.d-Man or His chosen servants. The men and women whom they celebrated on those days were chosen characters who had devoted themselves unselfishly to others, so that the after-time hailed them as saints because of their forgetfulness of self. We know what this constantly recurring reminder of the lives of great men and women may be, and then we must not forget that on these days in their great cathedral they heard the story of the life of the saint of the day, and often a discourse on the qualities that {194} stamped him or her as worthy of admiration.

Let us remember, above all, that there were as many women saints as men, and that these were held up for the admiration and emulation of growing youth. This was ethical training at every turn in life.