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Thomas Arnold
by
Ideas are in the air, and great inventions are worked out in different parts of the world at the same time. Rousseau had written his “Emile,” but we are not aware that Arnold ever read it.
And if he had, he probably would have been shocked, not inspired, by its almost brutal frankness. The French might read it–the English could not.
Pestalozzi was working out his ideas in Switzerland, and Froebel, an awkward farmer lad in Germany, was dreaming dreams that were to come true. But Thomas Arnold caught up the threads of feeling in England and expressed them in the fabric of his life.
His plans were scientific, but his reasons, unlike those of Pestalozzi, will not always stand the test of close analysis. Arnold was true to the Church, but he found it convenient to forget much for which the Church stood. He went back to a source nearer the fountainhead. All reforms in organized religion lie in returning to the primitive type. The religion of Jesus was very simple; that of a modern church dignitary is very complex. One can be understood; the other has to be explained and expounded, and usually several languages are required.
Arnold would have his boys evolve into Christian gentlemen. And his type of English gentleman he did not get out of books on theology–it was his own composite idea. But having once evolved it, he cast around to justify it by passages of Scripture. This was beautiful, too, but from our standpoint it wasn’t necessary.
From his it was.
A gentleman to him was a man who looked for the best in other people, and not for their faults; who overlooked slights; who forgot the good he had done; who was courteous, kind, cheerful, industrious and clean inside and out; who was slow to wrath, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. And the “Lord” to Arnold was embodied in Church and State.
Arnold used to say that schoolteaching should not be based upon religion, but it should be religion. And to him religion and conduct were one.
That he reformed Rugby through the Sixth Form is a fact. He infused into the big boys the thought that they must help the little ones; that for a first offense a lad must never be punished; that he should have the matter fully explained to him, and be shown that he should do right because it is right, and not for fear of punishment.
The Sixth Form was taught to unbend its dignity and enter into fellowship with its so-called inferiors. To this end Arnold set the example of playing cricket with the “scrubs.”
He never laughed at a poor player nor at a poor scholar. He took dull pupils into his own house, and insisted that his helpers, the other teachers, should do the same. He showed the Sixth Form how much better it was to take the part of the weak, and stop bullying the lower forms, than to set the example of it in the highest. Before Arnold had been at Rugby a year, the Sixth Form had resolved itself into a Reception Committee that greeted all newcomers, got them located, introduced them to the other boys, showed them the sights, and looked after their wants like big brothers or foster-fathers.
Christianity to Arnold was human service. In his zeal to serve, to benefit, to bless, to inspire, he never tired.
Such a disposition as this is contagious. In every big business or school, there is one man’s mental attitude that animates the whole institution. Everybody partakes of it. When the leader gets melancholia, the shop has it–the whole place becomes tinted with ultra-marine. The best helpers begin to get out, and the honeycombing process of dissolution is on.
A school must have a soul, just as surely as a shop, a bank, a hotel, a store, a home, or a church has to have. When an institution grows so great that it has no soul–simply a financial head and a board of directors–dry-rot sets in and disintegration in a loose wrapper is at the door.