Three Absurdities of Certain Modern Theories of Education [pp. 265-292]

Absurdities of Modern Education.
still exist; but, as real advance is made, there is also discovered,
more and more, a growing unity, in which all truly scientific
musicians tend to an agreement, and which becomes the common measure of what is truly right and excellent. The discords
arising from ignorance and want of culture are one after another
resolved. Each is enabled to determine a priori, what would
be pleasing to all, and thus do they continually draw nearer to
the true natural taste, instead of that which each man had previously claimed as being one with the decision of his own individual sense. It may be called the true natural taste, because
it lies under all these individual sensitivities, which are ever
varying with the outward influences, and because it is only
brought out by going down below the sense to some ratio or
reason that is universal, and may, therefore, become the foundation of a common science.
Should it be said, by way of objection to the illustration,
that this unity, or tendency to unity, is the result of a common
system controlling the more natural or genuine tastes, and
forcing them into agreement, the answer is promptly furnished
by the fact, that such a musical system has been for ages
growing out of the scientific cultivation, and that, therefore,
there must be some deep ground for it lying farther back than
those individual preferences that are ever different according to
the circumstances of time, and place, and physical temperament,
that go to form them.
As with the particular science of music, so also is it in respect
to that culture which consists in a harmonious combination of
the various departments of knowledge, physical, political, social,
moral, metaphysical, and theological. Just in proportion as
such culture has been thorough and extensive, will there be a
drawing together of all cultivated minds, a merging of those
ideas, so prized by some for their fancied novelty, which grow
out of the individualizing spirit, and are the peculiar boast of
those who call themselves self-educated men, and of what is so
appropriately styled the self-educating method. Just as the
true and well-harmonized educational process goes on, are
these conceits dropped one by one, as doctrines that have over
and over again been broached and exploded under ever shifting
aspects, whilst there is brought out, more and more, that con
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