TRUTH

“Young people should leave school knowing that their thoughts are not their own; that what we think of other people is a matter of justice or injustice…They should know that truth–that is, justice in word–is their due and that of all other persons; there are few better equipments for a citizen than a mind capable of discerning the truth, and this just mind can be preserved only by those who take heed what they think.” 
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp 60-61

“The consequence of truth is great, therefore the judgment of it must not be negligent.”
~Benjamin Whichcote, quoted by Charlotte Mason in Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 33

“To say that God knows all things and that his knowledge is perfect is to say that he is never mistaken in his perfection or understanding of the world: all that he knows and thinks is true and is a correct understanding of the nature of reality. In fact, since God knows all things infinitely well, we can say that the standard of true knowledge is conformity to God’s knowledge. If we think the same thing God thinks about anything in the universe, we are thinking truthfully about it.”
~Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p 196

“…but God does not allow us to escape the responsibility of choosing between right and wrong, even though we always choose the wrong, and continually offend against Him, ourselves, and our neighbour.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 196

“The goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good, and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval.”
~Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p 197

“We are not free to decide by ourselves what is worthy of approval and what is not.”
~Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p 197

“We may ask then, why is what God approves good? We must answer, ‘Because he approves it.’ That is to say, there is no higher standard of goodness than God’s own character and his approval of whatever is consistent with that character. Nonetheless, God has given us some reflection of his own sense of goodness, so that when we evaluate things in the way God created us to evaluate them, we will also approve what God approves and delight in things in which he delights.”
~Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p 197

“As for that aesthetic ‘appetency’ (to use Coleridge’s word) upon which so many of the gentle pleasures of life depend, it is open to many disasters: it dies of inanition when beauty is not duly presented to it, beauty in words, in pictures and music, in tree and flower and sky. The function of the sense of beauty is to open a paradise of pleasure for us; but what if we grow up admiring the wrong things, or, what is morally worse, arrogant in the belief that it is only we and our kind who are able to appreciate and distinguish beauty? It is no small part of education to have seen much beauty, to recognize it when we see it, and to keep ourselves humble in its presence.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 56

“What we call Nature is all Beauty and delight, and the person who watches Nature closely and knows her well, like the poet Wordsworth, for example, has his Beauty Sense always active, always bringing him joy.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 42

“A beholder may or may not have the ability to appreciate beauty, but one thing is clear, the beholder does not make beauty, for God is beauty. It is one of His attributes, and therefore what He says and does is beautiful. The question for us is simple, yet profound in its implication: Do we have the Godgiven ability to see the beauty of the Lord, affirm that beauty, and then use His beauty to rejoice in the Lord for His own glory?”
~Harry Reeder, The TriuneGod: Good, Beautiful, and True

“I want to persuade you that beauty matters; that it is not just a subjective thing, but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need, we find ourselves in a spiritual desert. I want to show you the path out of that desert. It is a path that leads to home.”
~Roger Scruton, Why Beauty Matters

“The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things–the beauty, the memory of our own past–are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Children are born persons…”
~Charlotte Mason

“We are not our own; but God, who has given us life, and whose we are, has planted within us Conscience, to remind us continually that we owe ourselves to Him, and must order our ways to please Him, and that He is the judge who will visit every offence surely and directly, if not to-day, then to-morrow.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 6

“If we have not proved that a child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 36

“We are told by many in our generation that this small child is a cog in a machine, or even that he is a possession, like a pet animal. Many adults now ‘have’ a child, in the same way they ‘have’ a washing machine or a collie dog. We must answer: No. You are holding a person on your knee. And that is wonderful.”
~Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, For the Children’s Sake

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“The smallness of the family tends to obscure its character…we do not perceive that, if the unit of the nation is the natural commune, the family; then, is the family pledged to carry on within itself all the functions of the State, with the delicacy, precision, and fulness of detail proper to work done on a small scale.”
~Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p 5

“What is a family? A family is an ecologically balanced environment for the growth of human beings. It came into existence for that purpose. It was God whose idea it was to place a man and woman together to begin the first family. It was God who told them that the next family would come about by a man and a woman leaving their parents, and the man cleaving to his wife to become one flesh.”
~Edith Schaeffer, What is a Family?

“The family is the test of freedom: because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. Other institutions must largely be made for him by strangers, whether the institutions be despotic or democratic. There is no other way of organizing mankind which can give this power and dignity, not only to mankind but to men.”
~G.K. Chesterton, Fancies vs Fads

A family is “one man and one woman united in matrimony (barring death of a spouse) plus (normally) natural or adopted children and, secondarily, any other persons related by blood.”
~Andreas Kostenberger, God, Marriage & Family

Matthew 22:36-38, Philippians 2:5-8

“Here is a complete chain of the educational philosophy I have endeavoured to work out, which has, at least, the merit that it is successful in practice. Some few hints I have, as I have said, adopted and applied, but I hope I have succeeded in methodising the whole and making education what it should be, a system of applied philosophy; I have, however, carefully abstained from the use of philosophical terms.

This is, briefly, how it works:––

A child is a Person with the spiritual requirements and capabilities of a person.

Knowledge ‘nourishes’ the mind as food nourishes the body.

A child requires knowledge as much as he requires food.

He is furnished with the desire for Knowledge, i.e., Curiosity; with the power to apprehend Knowledge, that is, attention; with powers of mind to deal with Knowledge without aid from without––such as imagination, reflection, judgment; with innate interest in all Knowledge that he needs as a human being; with power to retain and communicate such Knowledge; and to assimilate all that is necessary to him.

He requires that in most cases Knowledge be communicated to him in literary form; and reproduces such Knowledge touched by his own personality; thus his reproduction becomes original.

The natural provision for the appropriation and assimilation of Knowledge is adequate and no stimulus is required; but some moral control is necessary to secure the act of attention; a child receives this in the certainty that he will be required to recount what he has read. Children have a right to the best we possess; therefore their lesson books should be, as far as possible, our best books.

They weary of talk, and questions bore them, so that they should be allowed to use their books for themselves; they will ask for such help as they wish for.

They require a great variety of knowledge,––about religion, the humanities, science, art; therefore, they should have a wide curriculum, with a definite amount of reading set for each short period of study.

The teacher affords direction, sympathy in studies, a vivifying word here and there, help in the making of experiments, etc., as well as the usual teaching in languages, experimental science and mathematics.

Pursued under these conditions, “Studies serve for delight,” and the consciousness of daily progress is exhilarating to both teacher and children.

The reader will say with truth,––”I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles”; and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not ‘more or less,’ but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated. I suppose the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with; every surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied for the rather casual ‘more or less’ methods of earlier days.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp 18-19

“Let us take it to ourselves that great character comes out of great thoughts, and that great thought must be initiated by great thinkers; then we shall have a definite aim in education. Thinking and not doing is the source of character.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp 277-278

“But [God’s] commandment is exceeding broad; becomes broader year by year with every revelation of science; and we had need gird up the loins of our mind to keep pace with this current revelation. We shall be at pains, too, to keep ourselves in that attitude of expectant attention wherein we shall be enabled to perceive the unity and continuity of this revelation with that of the written word of God. For perhaps it is only as we are able to receive the two, and harmonise the two in a willing and obedient heart, that we shall enter on the heritage of glad and holy living which is the will of God for us.”
~Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p 22

“​​What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of society as it passes from one generation to another. What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.”
~G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, July 5, 1924

1 Corinthians 8:9-13, Hebrews 13:7

“The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 32

“Every enthusiastic teacher knows that he is obeying the precept—‘feed my lambs’—feed with all those things which are good and wholesome for the spirit of a man; and before all and including all, with the knowledge of God.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 246

“Our deadly error is to suppose that we are his showman to the universe…”
~Charlotte Mason, School Education, p 188

“That is the capital charge against most schools. The teachers underrate the tastes and abilities of their pupils.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 52

“This natural aptitude for literature, or, shall we say, rhetoric, which overcomes the disabilities of a poor vocabulary without effort, should direct the manner of instruction we give, ruling out the talky-talky of the oral lesson and the lecture; ruling out, equally, compilations and text-books; and placing books in the hands of children and only those which are more or less literary in character that is, which have the terseness and vividness proper to literary work. The natural desire for knowledge does the rest and the children feed and grow.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp 90-91

“The initial idea begets subsequent ideas; therefore, take care that children get right primary ideas on the great relations and duties of life.”
~Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p 39

“In older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao* [the Tradition of Truth which is “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false”]–a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen. They handed on what they had received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which over-arched him and them alike.”
~C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, pp 60-61;
*definition of the Tao from Abolition p 18 – Lewis borrows the Chinese term here but does not mean Chinese mysticism or spiritualism in his use of the term

“It is very easy for a teacher to turn himself into an opaque substitute for literary experience, presenting himself and his personal influence as the substitute. This is a subtle and insidious temptation he must fight against every moment in the classroom. His ultimate goal is the abolition of himself, or the turning of himself into a transparent medium for his subject so that the authority of his subject may be supreme over both teacher and students.”
~Northrop Frye

“The Palace of Art.––We take pleasure, too, in the arrangement and colouring of a nice room, of a nice dress, in the cover of a book, in the iron fittings of a door, when these are what is called artistic. This brings us to another world of beauty created for us by those whose Beauty Sense enables them not only to see and take joy in all the Beauty there is, but whose souls become so filled with the Beauty they gather through eye and ear that they produce for us new forms of Beauty––in picture, statue, glorious cathedral, in delicate ornament, in fugue, sonata, simple melody. When we think for a moment, how we must admire the goodness of God in placing us in a world so exceedingly full of Beauty––whether it be of what we call Nature or of what we call Art––and in giving us that sense of Beauty which enables us to see and hear, and to be as it were suffused with pleasure at a single beautiful effect brought to our ear or our eye.” 
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 42

“As a Christian we know why a work of art has value. Why? First, because a work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator. The first sentence in the Bible is the declaration that the Creator created: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
~Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible

“[T]he way we define art has the power to shape our culture…[A]rt affects us at the deepest level of the soul. It can shape our thoughts, move our emotions, enlarge our imaginations. The music we listen to, the images we plant in our minds, the stories we tell–all have enormous power over the kind of people we are. They both express and shape our beliefs and values.”
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, p 440

“Since God made human beings in his image, our capacity for aesthetic enjoyment is part of the way he created us–one of his good gifts to us. An engaging story, a majestic symphony, a beautiful landscape painting–these works of art give us aesthetic pleasure and cause us to contemplate not only the beauty of the world God created but also the eternal beauty of God himself.”
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, p 441

“So desperate at times appears the condition of our world that it seems as if only a miracle could save us. We forget that in art we have at hand the perpetual possibility of such a miracle. Art is given us to redeem us. All we are in the habit of asking or expecting of it today is that it should please or teach – whereas it ought to captivate us, carry us out of ourselves, and make us over into something more nearly in its own image.” 
~Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, p 14

James 3:1-18

“As for literature––to introduce children to literature is to install them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child’s intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 51

“Every study, every line of thought, has its ‘guiding idea’; therefore, the study of a child makes for living education in proportion as it is quickened by the guiding idea which stands at the head.”
~Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p 39

“Observe, there is a poor place close at hand, where pictures are painted for you and where people are introduced; but you cannot see the pictures with your eyes shut, and the people do not live and act in your thoughts; there is as much difference between this region outside and that within the Kingdom of Literature as there is between a panorama and the real, beautiful country it is intended to portray. It is a horrible waste of time to wander about in this outside region, yet many people spend a large part of their lives there, and never once get within sight of the beauties and delights within the Kingdom of Literature.

There is another test, besides the two of scenes that you see and people that you know, which distinguishes Literature from the barren land on its borders; and if he is to apply this test, Intellect must keep his Beauty Sense always by his side. Read over, and see if you find a difference of flavour, shall I say, between the two passages that follow. Try if the first gives you a sense of delight in the words alone, without any thought of the meaning of them, if the very words seem to sing to you;

   “That time of year thou mayst in me behold
      When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
      Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
      Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

Now read the next passage;

  “Household Deities!
      Then only shall be happiness on earth
      When man shall feel your sacred power and love
      Your tranquil joys.”

Can you perceive that, though the second passage is true, thoughtful, and well expressed, it just misses a certain charm in the wording which makes words go home to our heart with living power? If you cannot see any difference in value between these two passages, perhaps you will do so some day.

The thing is, to keep your eye upon words and wait to feel their force and beauty; and, when words are so fit that no other words can be put in their places, so few that none can be left out without spoiling the sense, and so fresh and musical that they delight you, then you may be sure that you are reading Literature, whether in prose or poetry. A great deal of delightful literature can be recognised only by this test.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, pp 40-41

“The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out.”
~Robert Louis Stevenson

“The necessary condition of all good reading is ‘to get ourselves out of the way’; we do not help the young to do this by forcing them to keep on expressing opinion.”
~C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

“We are wholly dependent upon language, as the postmodernists say; but Christians base their faith on God’s language, that is, the Bible as the Word of God.”
~Gene Veith, Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, p 221

“Since God reveals Himself in language, language is not intrinsically deceptive; rather, language is revelatory and can express truth. God–not culture–is the origin of meaning, truth, and values.”
~Gene Veith, Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, p 222

“[A] story gets at aspects of the truth that are beyond the power of didactic teaching. Symbols, metaphors, allegories, and images move the whole person–the emotions and senses as well as the intellect. The rich, evocative words of literature are far more powerful than factual description.”
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, p 440

1 Corinthians 10:11-13, Acts 5:29

“Here, too, is a subject which should be to the child an inexhaustible storehouse of ideas, should enrich the chambers of his House Beautiful with a thousand tableaux, pathetic and heroic, and should form in him, insensibly, principles whereby he will hereafter judge of the behaviour of nations, and will rule his own conduct as one of a nation. This is what the study of history should do for the child…”
~Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p 279

“Of course there is a great deal to criticise in any country, and I should be the last person to suggest that the critical faculty should not be exercised and trained at school. But before we teach children to criticise the institutions of their country, before we teach them to be critical of what is bad, let us teach them to recognize and admire what is good.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 126

“[I]t is good, doubtless, to be cosmopolitan in our tastes, liberal and unprejudiced in our judgments; but he who would love all the world must begin with the brother whom he has seen, and enlightened sympathy with other nations can coexist only with profound and instructed patriotism.”
~Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character, p 135

“The fine sense, like an atmosphere, of things worth knowing and worth living for, this it is which produces magnanimous citizens, and we feel that Milton was right in claiming magnanimity as the proper outcome of education.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp 267-268

“There is another form in which the magnanimous citizen of the future must be taught the sense of justice. Our opinions show our integrity of thought. Every person has many opinions whether his own honestly thought out, or notions picked up from his pet newspaper or his companions. The person who thinks out his opinions modestly and carefully is doing his duty as truly as if he saved a life because there is no more or less about duty.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp 61-62

“[We] must listen and consider, being sure that one of the purposes we are in the world for is, to form right opinions about all matters that come in our way.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 185

“…we must avoid the short road to opinions; we must not pick them up ready made at any street-corner; and next, we must learn––and this is truly difficult, a matter that takes us all our lives––to recognise a fallacy, that is, an argument which appears sound but does not bear examination. But the question of fallacies is a big one, and all we need bear in mind now is, that popular cries, whether in the school or the country, very often rest upon fallacies or false judgments. So we must look all round the notions we take up.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 185

“Now, of all the errors that have hindered men and nations, this is perhaps the most unfortunate. A man picks up a notion, calls it his opinion, spreads it here and there, until in the end that foolish notion becomes a danger to society and a bondage to the individual.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book II, p 56

“History is not just a subject that ought to be taught or read because it will make us a better citizen, although it will. Nor should we encourage young people to embrace history only because it creates more thoughtful and understanding human beings. Nor should we only share stories about the past because we will behave better. History should be taught for pleasure. The joy of history, like art or music or literature, consists of an expansion of the experience of being alive. And that is what education is largely about.”
~David McCullough

“[T]he most useful member of the family of nations is normally a strongly patriotic nation. So far from patriotism being inconsistent with a proper regard for the rights of other nations, I hold that the true patriot, who is as jealous of national honor as a gentleman of his own honor, will be careful to see that the nations neither inflict nor suffer wrong…”
~Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic (“Man in the Arena“)

“If we owe to it [civil society] any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option.”
~Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: Party, Parliament, and the dividing of the Whigs 1780-1794 

Philippians 1:10-11

“We cannot live sanely unless we know that other peoples are as we are with a difference, that their history is as ours, with a difference, that they too have been represented by their poets and their artists, that they too have their literature and their national life.”
~Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p 178

“While we are equal in our essence, God has not made us equal in our abilities, opportunities, or experience. Because this is God’s intention, any attempt to equalize humanity would only end in its denigration.”
~R.C. Sproul, Equality and Diversity

“Humility is perhaps one with Simplicity, and does not allow us to think of ourselves at all, ill or well. That is why a child is humble. The thought of self does not come to him at all; when it does, he falls from his child estate and becomes what we call self-conscious. In that wonderful first lesson of the Garden of Eden, the Fall consisted in our first parents becoming aware of themselves; and that is how we all fall––when we become aware.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 129

“Upon the knowledge of these great matters — History, Literature, Nature, Science, Art — the Mind feeds and grows. It assimilates such knowledge as the body assimilates food, and the person becomes what is called magnanimous, that is, a person of great mind, wide interests, incapable of occupying himself much about petty, personal matters.”
~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves Book I, p 78

“[The intellectual life will be a road to God] only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of Theologica Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge–our knowing–more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived.” 

~C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory, p 57

“The head rules the belly through the chest–the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment–these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man.”
~C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, pp 24-25