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George Combe, brother of Andrew Combe, Scottish physiologist; was a writer on phrenology and education. He was born in Edinburgh, where for some time he practised as a lawyer. However, he devoted himself to the promotion of phrenology, a defunct field of study, once considered a science, by which the personality traits of a person were determined by "reading" bumps and fissures in the skull. and of his views on education, for which he in 1848 founded a school. His chief work was The Constitution of Man in1828, and his wife returned to Britain physically and mentally exhausted by their two year tour of the United States. Retiring to a cottage just outside Edinburgh, they spent the next six months trying to obey the laws of nature – George leisurely composing his Notes on America and revising his Lectures on Moral Philosophy, and Cecy enjoying the countryside and visits from friends. Phrenology had prospered in his absence. As he told the National Association of Phrenologists that September, the application of the laws of mind were at last starting to bear fruit in fields as diverse as criminology, jurisprudence, medicine, anthropology, and education. He did caution that to be accepted as a scientists phrenologists had to move beyond mere observation to the precise measurement of the head, and challenged the group to develop instruments that could quantify the size of the brains various organs. He was particularly pleased to report the progress of phrenology in America and across the continent – even Italy was starting to embrace its doctrines. he one dark spot was the almost complete ignorance of God's laws in Germany, the country of phrenology's origin.

Increasingly concerned about his wife's health, and determined to fulfill his pledge to introduce phrenology to the land of Franz Joseph Gall, a neuroanatomist and physiologist who was a pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain, Combe re-commenced lessons in German and started planning for a year-long visit to the Rhineland. In the meantime a most important and pressing duty had to be completed, the popularization of Horace Mann's work in Britain. Still relatively unknown in the United Kingdom, Combe was hopeful that the Massachusetts Common School Revival could provide a blueprint for the advancement of education in a nation still bitterly divided along religious and political lines. The free institutions of America, he reasoned, with their unique combination of sectarian impartiality and limited moral authority, were far more congenial to the Anglo-Saxon mind than the autocratic and centralized machinery of despotic Prussia. Published anonymously in the Edinburgh Review in June 1841, Combe's "Remarks on Education in America" presented a compelling digest of Mann's first four Reports, the School Returns, the Common School Journal, and the 1840 contest to dissolve the Board. Starting with a clear account of the main legal statutes governing the powers and responsibilities of school districts, taxation, and religious neutrality in education – noting, in particular, the edict that "the school committee shall never direct to be purchased or used, in any of the town schools, any schoolbooks which are calculated to favor the tenets of any particular sect of Christians" – he explained how, without centralized guidance, Massachusetts' famed localism had failed to meet the State's historic educational mission. Responding to this situation, the government had appointed a School Board, a Secretary, and appropriated matching funds for school construction — much as had been done in England with James K. Shuttleworth, the Committee of the Privy Council, and the parliamentary grants. The genius of the Massachusetts system however, had been the appointment of Horace Mann. Without any legal power to compel reform, he had spread practical knowledge across the state devoid of party or cant. His writings, speeches, and personal influence had awakened the public to the advantages of education, and Massachusetts was now engaged in a massive grass-roots revitalization of its schools. Teacher training colleges were being built and library books disseminated to raise the popular mind. Combe also drew attention to Mann's advocacy of female teachers and to the effectiveness with which he had used the School Returns. Not only did these abstracts contain a "vast amount of valuable information," but also by "informing each district what all the others are doing," it operated "powerfully on the spirit of emulation." "Even the most callous, he reported, are roused into sensibility and shame, when they see their own imperfections exhibited to the public gaze." It was true that political opponents had attempted to crush this movement, but not Combe noted, for any infringement of religious feeling. In all the thousands of pages of reports, many written by local clergymen of different denominations, there had not been a single call for sectarian teaching. Surely, he concluded, these facts, the potent combination of perfect impartiality and the absence of compulsion, demonstrate "strong evidence of the possibility of operating on the public mind by means of an organized system, and authorized functionaries, wielding moral powers alone," a lesson, he added pointedly, that appears highly "instructive to ourselves." Indeed, when the movement for a national system of secular education re-ignited in Manchester some six years later, the main provisions cited in the group's manifesto were derived from Combe's article. Combe's remarks also created something of a stir in Massachusetts, where, Mann reported, the article

was received here by all the friends of the good cause with great delight. Conjecture has been active in divining its authorship; but even our friend Dr Howe is at fault. As it bore no resemblance to your ordinary style, & was encinctured even with an honor opathic dilution of Phrenology — he thought it could not be yours. Mr. Sparks has given out that it was written by some member of Parliament, who was very anxious to become acquainted with our system, & whom he supplied with all our documents for that purpose. With others the title to its authorship is ambulatory, migrating from Mr. Simpson to Lord Brougham & yourself. To all however, & especially to my friends, it is in the highest degree gratifying; – I mean to all whom you would like to gratify, for Frederic Emerson, one of the authors of the Report to abolish the Board is incensed against it, & asserts that it was written here & sent to Edinburgh to be printed & sent back; but nobody believes him.

Not only were the free institutions of the United States better adapted to the English temperament, but also, as Combe had discovered on his American tour, in stimulating the faculties to action, they were also the most effective in raising the public mind. This became obvious later that summer as Combe made his way from Hamburg to Breman to Godesburg to Mannheim. For, despite the overall superiority of the German mind, it was evident for the poor intellectual and moral state of the peasants that Germany's autocratic regime was stifling the development of the higher powers. The new schoolhouses he saw on his travels demonstrated the government's earnest desire to enlighten the population, but without the freedom to engage in political action – to think and act for oneself – Combe was convinced that the population would remain mired in their old habits. If only he could persuade a few leading men to consider the truth of his teachings, Combe was convinced "from their large intellect, and coronal organs, the Germans would make better use of free institutions than either the Americans of the English have done." Compared to his visit of 1837, Combe noted, "Steam boats and railroads are breaking the despot's chains." Never were there a more propitious time and place to disseminate the truths of phrenology — yet the weight of this mission lay heavily upon him. For the best part of a year he worked daily with tutors and his German translator, Von Struve, practicing his language skills and adapting lectures from his System to the tastes and manners of a German academic audience. By May, with the enthusiastic support of Von Struve and several other German friends, Combe had gained sufficient confidence to present himself to the faculty at Heidelberg. With the aid of Mittermair and Chelius, professors of law and surgery, a course of twenty-two lectures was arranged. Despite his anxiety and an unremitting nervous headache, Combe persevered, presenting his doctrines on successive nights to respectable audiences varying between 40 and seventy intellectuals and public officials. Whether or not he made any important converts is unclear. But his efforts were appreciated; even Teidemann, an early adversary of Gall's was cordial and thanked Combe for his labors.

Having pushed his "powers to their utmost," as he wrote to Andrew, Combe confessed that he had little spirit or energy to continue his mission. Forwarding his casts and skulls to Dresden, in the event that he might recover sufficiently to lecture there the following year, he headed home to recuperate at the "doctor's" house for the winter. After several months of better health Combe again entertained the possibility of lecturing in Germany, but reluctantly submitted to medical advise that even reading a prepared paper might seriously jeopardize his health. Rather than lecture the Germans, he would take the waters and winter in Italy. Still, he had important projects to complete beforehand, including an essay he had promise professor Mitternmair on the "Application of **." Appearing in the Phrenological Journal the following June, Combe drew upon the "separate" and "congregate" systems of America's Eastern and Auburn penitentiaries to advance his own progressive views on the treatment of the criminal. Stressing the reform of diseased brains, he recommended solitary confinement to subdue excited passions, followed by constructive occupations and extensive moral lessons to bolster the higher faculties. Only when sufficient progress is made, irrespective of the crime, would he permit the gradual re-introduction of a prisoner into society. Those whose brains were incapable of transformation, he insisted, ha to be confined for life. It was these same principles that Howe, together with Mann and Sumner, pressed in the acrimonious disputes of the Boston Prison Discipline Society during 1845.

Combe's other activities during the spring of 1843 included completing a greatly expanded version of the System and convincing Mann to take an educational tour of Germany. Careful not to get over-excited, Combe could not keep up with Mann's frenetic pace. Preferring art galleries to schools and prisons he concentrated instead on his new interest in fine arts, and was eager to visit the Galleries and museums of Europe to see how well the great painters and sculptures had captured their subjects as measured by the principles of phrenology. So it was, after his brief meeting with Mann in Germany, that Combe traveled on to Italy to spend the best part of a year examining the works of the great masters – his thoughts appearing the in Phrenology Applied to Painting and Sculpture.

Two anonymous publications occupied Combe's attention in the second half of 1843. The first, The Vestiges of Natural Creation, arrived at his door without a note. Written by his friend Robert Chambers, who zealously protected his identity to protect his publishing business, many thought this sweeping account of the evolution of life that included an endorsement of phrenology could be attributed to Combe. He was in complete agreement with the text, except for the assertion that organic life arose from chemical processes-and, one senses, a little jealous of the book's celebrity. Even so, The Vestiges became something of a talisman for Combe, indicating by its reception that the public was now ready to hear more advanced doctrines.

The second work, a pamphlet titled "Who should educate the Prince of Wales?" appeared later in the year. Combe and his brother were objects of special interest, especially among the German members of the British court. In 1836, on the advice of the Queen's physician, James Clark, Andrew Combe was appointed doctor to Leopold I, King of Belgium's. Although forced by ill health to resign after only a few months, during his short stay in Brussels he did treat then Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, and made a strong impression on his council, Baron Stockmair. Two years later, George Combe was introduced to the Baron at Clark's house. As he reported to Andrew, he examined the Baron's head, finding "large morale with a fair intellect," and engaged him in conversation "on ideas in general, and found him more perfectly of our way of thinking in morals, religion, and politics than any man, who was not a thorough phrenologist, whom I have ever seen."

Over the next few years, the Baron became a convert to phrenology, and together with Clark, promoted its doctrines to the royal court. Albert because so enamored with Combe's teachings (and his love of all things German), he even presented copies of Moral Philosophy and Lectures on Popular Education, to leading politicians. Stockmair was keen to know Combe's views on the article, largely a plea not to appoint a clergyman as the young prince's tutor and to follow what Combe saw as a rather utopian curriculum suited to a child savant. Combe, of course, warned against overtaxing the child's mind and recommended a tutor schooled in phrenology that could teach Alfred scientific knowledge of the world in accordance with the needs of his developing faculties. Special care had to be taken not to overexcite his organs of Self-esteem and Love of Approbation, already endangered by the reality of his position. But beyond this typical digest of phrenological wisdom, his long, detailed letter also explored some new weightier topics, issues about the relationship between government and religion he would explore more thoroughly over the next few years in an important trio of papers, "Remarks on National Education," "On the Relation between Religion and Science," and "What should a Secular Education Embrace" — as he pushed the logic of his secular faith to its apogee.

Basically, Combe was concerned that the future authority of the sovereign not be grounded in the irrational doctrines of revealed religion. In the past, royalty had turned to the church, believing that faith in the supernatural was the only instrument by which to maintain social order. But the Bible was too impressive a book to ensure stability in the modern world; government had to be grounded upon the universal truths of morality God had crafted into the human constitution. From his conversation with enlightened minds in Germany, American, and Italy, Combe assured the Baron that "Christianity is merely a republication of the religion of nature, and that its pure and comprehensive morality is the solid foundation on which all the supernatural portions of its structures rest." The scriptures, that is, provided important if imprecise guides to conduct insofar as they captured the essence of natural laws. Of course, as future King, Edward would have to be schooled in the doctrines of the future Anglican Church, but he should at least have an education that went beyond dogma and opened his mind to the moral foundation of social life. No longer a divine figurehead, the future king was thus to be the first magistrate of the nation, a living representative of the moral and intellectual powers that would lead the country toward prosperity and civilization.

During the summer of 1846, Combe was invited to explain his ideas at Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria, more skeptical than her husband, was growing concerned that Prince Alfred, born two years earlier, was not making satisfactory progress. Combe's delineation of the royal head seemed to allay her fears, but contrary to Combe's hopes, Queen Victoria stuck with convention and appointed Bishop Wilberforce to oversee Edward's education. Several years later, in 1850, after a second visit and much prodding from Stockmair, Clark, and Prince Albert, a German phrenologist, Ernst Becker, was retained as a tutor to the young Prince. Combe was ecstatic at the opportunity to prove the benefits of phrenology and entertained high hopes that the rest of the nation would soon embrace the wisdom of the first family. Bringing Becker to his house in Edinburgh in the winter of 1850-51, Combe spent three months teaching him physiology, and thereafter maintained a detailed bi-weekly correspondence on the progress of the royal student until 1854, when Becker was replaced by an even more important colleague of Combe's, William Ellis. As it turned out the "place project" had little or no direct impact on the course of education in Britain, but Combe was always grateful of his patron's support. As he wrote in his journal a few months before he died.

The Queen and the Prince Consort have risen far above the prejudices of the age in the education of their family, and in a far distant day their merits in this, as in many other particulars, will be appreciated far more highly than now.

The phenomenal sale of the Vestages was not the only indication that a more rational attitude was developing toward the relationship between science and religion. Industrial expansion, the growth of the railroads, and numerous other technological advances all demonstrated the advantages that flowed from harnessing the laws of nature. Combe saw cracks appearing in the orthodox façade of the church and signs of reasonableness among the aristocracy-never had he "known England and Scotland, morally and physically, in a more promising condition" (213. But by far the most cheering event of 1846 was the repeal of the Corn Laws. Seventy years after Adam Smith, Richard Cobden had taught the public and the peers the power of reason." (213) The principle of free trade stood as a sublime proof of God's providential economy: could Cobden not be persuaded to elevate other truths of reason. In particular, could he not be persuaded to become the English Horace Mann and carry the cause of public education to the nation?

Like Mann, Cobden was a committed disciple of Combe's teachings-the Constitution, he declared, read like a transcript of his own familiar thoughts (II, 15). The two men began their life-long friendship in 1837 when Cobden, interested in promoting a phrenological society, invited Combe to lecture in Manchester. Cobden was particularly impressed when Combe identified his large organ of Veneration-"which," he confessed eleven years later, "was a triumph for phrenology" (218). For despite "possessing a strong logical faculty, which keeps me in the path of rationalism," he admitted to "a strong religious feeling," and "a sympathy for men who act under that impulse" (218). Indeed, it was this sympathy that tempted him to believe he might be able o engineer some compromise to the education question. But the fundamental divisions he encountered during Simpson's visit to the city a decade earlier were still in place. The best policy, he cautioned Combe, was to first push the extension of the authorization, and then promote public schooling. Dogmatic minds, already starting to thaw, would finally come to their senses when they realized that the working classes would be their masters.

Combe was in no mood to wait for the passing of geologic time, especially given Kay-Shuttleworth's plans to gain centralized bureaucratic control of the nation's schools, as revealed in his famous 1946 minutes.

Since the effect to pass the factory out of 1843, church and dissent had split into radically opposed camps. Rallying against Graham's bill to provide factory schools under the administration of the Church, had found them caught between two public schooling that included religion would favor the church. The only way forward was voluntarism. As promoted by Edward Baines, editor of Leeds Mercury, and Edward Maill, and Herbert Spencer of the Nonconformist, dissent took the increasingly militant stance that any government involvement in schooling was immoral. Public charity and the principle of laissez-faire, the believed, were sufficient to meet the country's educational needs.

Kay-Shuttleworth's scheme of expanding normal schools, instituting teaching certificates, and tying government grants to inspection and standardization of the curriculum was thus seen as a blatant effort to favor the hegemony of the church. Combe also feared the despotic authority of a powerful centralized agency to impose dogmatic beliefs on society-but he was no friend of volunteerism. Was there not a domain of religious, moral, and intellectual knowledge common to all sects and creeds, that men and women could recognize as essential to life in the modern world? Was it not the duty of government to provide instruction in these and only these areas? Facing the splintering of opinion and the retrenchment of old animosities, Combe decided the time was ripe for a new look at the central concepts in the debate.

Each group, he argued in his Remarks on National Education (1847), whether favoring secular, or combined instruction, is committed to certain views of "the nature of man, of the origin and objects of society, and duties of government, and of the connection between practical morality, secular prosperity, and religious belief. (15). Yet none had offered a systematic analysis of these fundamental relationships, and without this, hope of a harmonious solution to the educational problem was impossible.

Starting with the basic premise of the Constitution, that the world is a great theater adapted to human nature in which only those actions in accord with physical laws are rewarded with prosperity and happiness, Combe defined education as the transmission of knowledge necessary for intelligent conduct, and the training of faculties to reap the higher enjoyments of life. Society and government were both products of men and women's mental organization, different individuals, because of their innate dispositions and talents, being suited to the various roles of the body politic.

In the physical world, actions are rewarded or punished by God's providential economy of nature; in the social world, human beings were left to manage their own affairs according to the universal dictum that "an individual, in pursuing his own happiness, does not invade that of his neighbors" (10). The advantages of society thus imposed certain constraints on the behavior of its citizens. Government had the right to insist that every individual develop physically, intellectually, and morally in such a way that their health, conduct, and civic and to the well-being of all-certainly, they had an obligation not to pass vice on to their progeny. Combe even thought that religious sentiments were important for the welfare of society. But as with many personal and aesthetic pursuits that did not infringe upon others, he was adamant that much of religion was not under the orbit of society, but the free choice of individuals. The principle of demarcation was the natural/supernatural dichotomy. While it was justifiable to insist that men and women obey the religious directives woven into the fabric of the world, revealed truth about the afterlife had to speak to the individual conscience? Indeed, Combe went so far as to explain "that no law is laid down to man in the Bible for his guidance in temporal affairs, which is not inscribed as dearly in the book of nature" (14). Who could object then to the conclusion that the state has a right to teach the practical doctrines of natural religion recognized in Scripture, to all? (17).

Combe identified two opponents. The voluntarisms who recognized the importance of education to the social well-being but could not accept that schooling should be the responsibility of the government, and the arch-conservatives, such as Robert Ingles, humorously known in Parliament as "the member for heaven," who criticized any al all talk of secular schooling as rank infidelity. In response to the first, Combe denied that the state was some evil entity over and above the people.

In Britain, there existed political checks and balances to monitor abuse, and, through the power of public opinion, ultimately the ballot, to censure any government that attempted to overstep its authority. The voluntary scheme, focused primarily upon proselytizing, had proven itself incapable of coordinating a national system of schooling and attending to the educational needs of all. Only the state could examine the workings of the whole, discover social laws, and disseminate information essential to the public good.

As for Ingles, in castigating the student of nature "as a gigantic scheme of godless education," did he believe "that God was author of a great system of infidelity?" (27) His own constituency, Oxford, seemed to bear this prejudice out, for at England's most eminent seat of learning, apart from the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England, the study of science was virtually unknown.

The divide between faith and reason was a cause of grave concern. "The notion that morality and religion rest exclusively on the Bible as their basis, has produced something like a divorce, not only between religion and science, but between religion and literature, religion and legislation, religion and history… and left religion in a kind of ideas desert, from which she issues only to disturb the march of mundane affairs." (27) In short, through their separation, the orthodox had created a Godless world-Combe was simply trying to infuse daily life with religion. The same error was evident in the work of the scientist and literary scholar. Leaving theological concerns to the Church, secular studies had failed to consider the presence of God in the works of nature, leaving the world and their inquires were devoid of religious significance.

Until science shall discover her own character and vocation-that she is the messenger of God, speaking directly to (the religious) sentiments in strains calculated to thrill and rouse them to the most energetic action-she will never wield her proper influence over society for the promotion of their (sic) moral, religious, and physical welfare. Never, until she do so, will she take that place in social esteem and veneration which, as the >>>>>> of divine wisdom, she is entitled to possess. (29)

Science, then, had to be understood as a form of religion.

Fortunately, he believed, religion based exclusively on the Bible was starting to fall before the progress of reason. Evangelicalism was in decline. "No longer the faith of the majority of the people," in a few years, men and women of intelligence and standing would stand up to the Church and shake the theological fabric in this country to the ground." (32) Their duty would then be to reconcile the religion and morality of nature with that of scripture, to the infinite advantage of both and of the people." (32-33)

There was no better proof of Combe's doctrines than the history of education in Ireland. For more than a century, the English church had excluded all but doctrinal teachings in the vain attempt to eradicate Catholicism. But starving the Irish mind of practical knowledge and stunting the growth of its higher faculties resulted in the most deplorable state of physical, moral, and intellectual depravity. Only after the legislation of 1828 was this situation addressed. For the past eighteen years, the same winning formula employed in Massachusetts-combined secular students, separate religious instruction, reading of the Holy scriptures without note or comment, and an inter-faith board to select textbooks-had met the approval of all sects and transformed the quality and quantity of schooling. There had been a four-fold increase in students, and clear evidence that the secular curriculum was developing intelligent and moral scholars adapted for success in life. Why could this system not be adopted with similar success in the rest of Britain?

Combe intensified his attack the following year in "The Relation Between Religion and Science." With a more student critique of sectarian education-whether supported by government grants or voluntary efforts. Attempting to ride the rising tide of rationalism, he called for a new Reformation in Religion that would "recognize man and the natural world as constituted by Divine Benevolence and Wisdom, and adapted to? For man's instruction and benefit." (126) The first article of this new faith would be to communicate to the young a knowledge of that constitution and its adaptations, as the basis of their religious faith and practice… and train them to realize in their own minds and bodies, and in the society to which they belong, the natural conditions on which health, prosperity, purity, piety, and peace depend." (126)

Until this charge was accomplished, the world would remain, as the Shorter Catechism presented it, a theatre of pain, misery, and suffering. Witness the despair of Ireland, the spread of disease in English cities, and the shocking mortality rates among the laboring classes. It was time for those enlightened clergymen who recognized a more rational and beneficent order in nature to stand against the orthodox fanatics who controlled most faiths, and openly advocate secular instruction essential to the intelligent conduct and moral action of the masses. Christianity, Combe continued, resided in the large body of truths common to all sects, not the fine (?) and irresolvable beliefs that separated them-dogmas that, even the most devout had to acknowledge, must be largely riddled with error. "To vote money, therefore, as is done by the Minutes of Council of August and December, 1846, to every sect, to enable it to educate its own members in its only religious doctrines, is actually to endow discord. It is deserting the shrine of reason and of moral and religious principle, and bowing at that of prejudice and bigotry." (155)

As the failure of voluntary efforts so painfully illustrated, the state had to fulfill its religious duty to the population by creating a system of education grounded in the laws of God's providential economy. The results would be miraculous. Drawing freely on Mann's Seventh Report, Combe contrasted the "no-system" of England with the remarkable achievements of Prussia. While the British mind-thanks only to the country's free institutions-had advanced modestly since Elizabethan times, the German had been transformed in a generation. In just forty years, the Prussian system of education had elevated the peasant class from ignorant surfs to intelligent, industrious, and energetic citizens. Importing this mechanism did not mean relinquishing democratic traditions for an autocratic bureaucracy. Horace Mann's achievements in Massachusetts-the fusion of non-sectarian Christian education, local control of schooling, and the moral guidance of a central board-provided a ready-made template suited to British manners and the peculiar religious problem that strangled the progress of the nation.

National Public School Association

It was only in that he became more actively involved in the cause of education. Several events seemed to have changed his attitude about the possibility of reform. As the decided advance Combe sensed a new spirit in the air. Opposition to the provisions of the Factory act and new sentiment growing for a national system of education. The anonymous Vestiges of Creation was selling well, a new generation of men was demonstrating practical and scientific spirit, and thanks to Richard Cobden and the Anti Corn League, an era of free trade was beginning. Industry and society advancing at unprecedented rates – this was the era of science, issuing staggering advances in mechanical production domestic and public services – railroads for example. Perhaps the time was ripe for a new onslaught on the religious problem. Mann's letter on the Common School controversy clearly sparked Combe's interest, if Mann could engineer a compromise among the supreme sectarians of New England, a group he recognized every bit as zealous as their British counterparts, then could not the same equation work in England and Scotland? But everything depended upon taking it to the country with the right person, a British Horace Mann, and that man, in Combe's mind, was Richard Cobden.

By mid 1840s, Combe was rubbing shoulders with some of the elites of the capital, even if, north of the border he was still person non grata. And, as he wrote his religious views did not seem to matter – he could say whatever he willed with out loosing his social standing. This appears to have emboldened him to develop his religious views – he would publish posthumously to protect his wife and family form it he ire of the Scottish Kirk, but sought to share them with his fiends through the privately published Inquiry. Later developed and published under Relation between Science and religion. He almost seems to link his greatest contribution, perhaps even the founding of a new religion.

This interest in secularism and secular schooling occupied Combe for the last decade of his life. He became involved with Cobden in the effort to push Mann's reforms on the national system, which led to the establishment of model secular schools, an association with Lovett and Ellis.

Promoting a national system of education based upon the Massachusetts system and promoting secular education and, belatedly trying to define the relationship between religion and science corresponding to his faith in secularism.

Combe would write articles on education and secularism, support the Lancashire movement as best he could. Joining with James Simpson, he lectured on Secularism in throughout Scotland — using money from the Henderson trust and donations from Edward Loring. Took an active part in the development and promotion of the secular schools. Williams secular school, and promoted the teaching of physiology – including writing an article on the teaching of physiology that illustrated Ellis' conversational method and efforts on secularism unnatural religion.

Cobden and the Lancashire Movement

1847 through 1851 were pivotal years in the campaign for a national system of education — years that saw Combe's greatest efforts to promote the theory and practice of secular education. He worked closely with other prominent reformers on two fronts; with Ellis and Lovett he sought to perfect the methods and curriculum of elementary schooling, while, with Cobden and Lucas he struggled to bring the education question before Parliament.

At the same time as he worked to establish the Williams school, Combe was equally active agitating for educational reform on the national stage. After their successful effort to repeal the Corn Laws, the Manchester Radicals had turned their attention to the campaign for public schooling. During 1847 a committee of seven lead by Alexander Ireland, editor of the Manchester Examiner, and Samuel Lucas, John Bright's brother-in-law, established the Lancashire Public School Association (LPSA) in order to promote a system of non-sectarian locally controlled schools.

Combe did everything he could to promote their cause: He arranged for Mann to provide the group his annual reports, issues of the Common School Journal, and an extended letter detailing the successes of the Massachusetts system; while he himself wrote a number of pamphlets supporting the board's policies.

Departing somewhat from the practices of New England, Combe argued for a system of state financed, locally controlled, secular schools. Although the Manchester group adopted Combe's suggestion to beef up the powers of the central board, they elected to follow Cobden's advice and retain a core of religious instruction based upon scriptures that did not offend any denominational group-including the region's large Catholic population. As with the Irish system, sectarian instruction would be the province of the home and the church. Combe, it seems, was prepared to support this non-sectarian program for the larger cause of universal schooling, and immersed himself in the project of securing funds, notably from wealthy silk manufacturer Edward Lombe.

In order to carry this movement to parliament, Cobden helped reconstitute the committee as the National Public School Association (N.P.S.A.). When written into a bill during 1850 by W. J. Fox, an original organizer of the Anti-Corn League and the member for Oldham, the "Lancashire Scheme" failed to gain the support of a weak government content to avoid fractious debates at a time relative social stability-a sentiment, it seems, that was shared by Cobden and his followers, who witnessed the demise of the N.P.S.A. during the following year. In a final effort to revitalize the national debate Combe published "On Secular Education," probably the most forceful statement of his moral science. But this defense of secularism, no less than his phrenology, found an increasingly unsympathetic audience and Combe's name, for so long synonymous with the call for popular schooling, gradually evaporated from the public mind.

And yet, as the century progressed, Combe's campaign for a universal system of schooling, like his efforts to establish a scientific curriculum and a child-centered pedagogy grounded in the laws of developmental psychology, eventually did bear fruit. For while his diffuse activities may not have led directly to the English Elementary Education Act of 1870 or the Scottish Act of 1872, as P. N. Farrar has shown, by publicizing and promoting the work of Horace Mann, Combe introduced the Massachusetts system of electing local boards and non-sectarian religious teaching that would eventually be incorporated into the British legislation. Nonetheless, as Farrar points out, the resulting school system, mostly divided on class lines, did not foster the common culture that either Combe or Mann had envisioned.

The Secular Schools

As even a cursory reading of "Chartism" reveals, Lovett was not exaggerating when he told Combe "whatever little good I have been able to achieve I am widely indebted to yourself." Lovett and his fellow author, John Collins, start out by defining education as "all those means which are used to developed the various faculties of mind and body, and so train them, that the child shall become a healthy, intelligent, moral, and useful member of society." "By the faculties of the mind" they meant "all those mental powers which perceive, reflect, and promote us to action." Because "in the proper use and exercise of every part of the mind and body, the vital current flows in that direction, not only to repair the waste consequent on that exercise, but to enlarge and strengthen it" each faculty should be trained through "a course of discipline," that will "habituate it to form certain operations with ease and effect." Applying this mental law to the training of the "intellectual, moral, and animal faculties" Lovett and Collins explain how the use of the object lesson can aid the unfolding of the perceptive, comparative and reflective powers; the importance of a correct moral environment, and the need for healthy working conditions, exercise and a knowledge of the body. Finally, while recognizing that the faculties of individuals may differ, the authors claim that all can enjoy a happy life and be useful members of society if they "follow the physical laws of their nature, the social institutions of man, and the moral laws of God."

By and large, Combe's blueprint for primary education was adapted from the curriculum of the Birkbeck schools founded by William Ellis. A self-made man, Ellis had realized the need for a national system of public education after reading the Constitution, and through his lectures, textbooks, and financial support of experimental schools did as much as any other person to further this cause. Along with his friend, the moral-force Chartist William Lovett, Ellis believed that social progress depended upon elevating the intelligence and conduct of the working classes. Combining principles of political economy, the physical sciences, and biology, Ellis designed a curriculum that would spell out "the Conditions of Human Well-Being" and the duties of life. Like Lovett's influential tract, "Chartism," Ellis' prospectus resonated with Combe's teachings. Rejecting sectarian, and indeed non-sectarian efforts to ground moral education on religious dogma, Ellis' schools would follow "modern science" and the laws governing the human mind by instituting practices designed to "strengthen, develop, and rightly direct all its faculties, by presenting to them the objects naturally adapted to call them into varied and healthy activity."

Extending ideas developed in conjunction with Lovett at the National Hall Day School, Ellis opened the first of his seven London schools, and with the help of Combe, Simpson, and other concerned parties, promoted a number of "model" schools in cities throughout the country. As the name suggests, these schools were established as paradigms for the curriculum and teaching practices that Ellis and his associates believed should be incorporated into the proposed system of common schools.

Combe was keen to play a leading role in this movement, and in December of the same year, combined with Ellis and Simpson to open the Williams Secular School in Edinburgh. Named after its first principal, William Mattieu Williams — a follower of Ellis and practicing phrenologist — the school operated successfully for six years with an average enrollment of 150 boys and girls. In line with Combe's teachings, the curriculum was divided into two basic categories: instruction in instrumental skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the transmission of positive knowledge about the human constitution and relations in the external world. By studying the body in anatomy and physiology, students learned about health, diet, exercise, the proper maintenance of the home, and the responsibilities of childcare, while in phrenology, they were introduced to the laws of mental life. Combe taught this last class himself. Mixing a kind of armchair anthropology with practical ethics, he attempted to instill in his pupils an appreciation for the exercise of their higher powers and the rewards that result from rational self-management. The category of external relations was further divided into the study of physical and social structures. Building on the knowledge of properties acquired through the object lesson, a host of explorative activities were employed to teach students the basic principles of mechanics, chemistry, and natural history. And, since good citizenship demanded an understanding of political economy, Williams followed Ellis by introducing students to the realities of supply and demand, wage and labor relations, pauperism, and the many practical lessons to be learned from the doctrines of self-help.

However, instruction in useful knowledge was not sufficient. To become moral and intellectual beings capable of intelligent self-government, children had to understand the basic principles underlying each of these areas. As Williams told parents at the first board meeting, the school's central goal "was to replace the blind memorization of words and dogma . . . with the acquisition of ideas." From a phrenological perspective, this implied that learning had to go beyond the organ of language to engage and train the higher faculties. Just as rewards and punishment were replaced by a system of discipline based upon the child's sense of justice, so, the verbal, rote, and rule following methods of traditional education were rejected for child-centered schemes such as Ellis's "Socratic method of teaching" in which students were encouraged to debate their instructors, offer their own observations, and generally demonstrate their grasp of topics by answering searching questions.

The guiding theme of the Williams school was to demonstrate to children the central principle of the Constitution, the beneficent order of God's universe and the greater happiness that results from acting in accordance with natural laws. Clearly, therefore, while eschewing religious doctrine, this was not the "Godless education" that many critics charged. As Combe never tired of explaining, although the Bible contained knowledge about the practices necessary to achieve salvation, it was not a manual for temporal well being. Science, not theology, revealed God's plan for human conduct. An intellectual division of labor was thus required: questions concerning the afterlife were the province of the home and the church, while secular or worldly problems were the domain of the school. Even so, Combe believed, the study of nature was no less religious than the study of the Bible. "In every step of this instruction," he argued,

We should direct the emotional faculties of wonder, reverence, benevolence, conscientiousness, and the love of the beautiful, to God as the Author of all, and train these faculties practically with the faith, that, in conforming to His laws, we are paying him the highest homage that can be offered by a rational being to his Creator; and at the same time expanding, elevating, and improving our own minds.

James Simpson died in 1853, age 73. The following year Williams accepted a lectureship in Birmingham and, despite all its successes, the school closed. Combe, who by this time was increasingly incapacitated by ill health, struggled in vain to reopen the school under a new principal. In part, the problem was financial; by refusing to include religious instruction in the curriculum, the school was ineligible for government grants and had to rely for it's funding on fees and philanthropic donations. But as public disillusionment with phrenology grew in a city "where the orthodox and metaphysicians with undisputed sway," Combe's influence and energy ebbed, and the school, like the doctrines that supported it, was simply lost to history.

Secularism

Physiology and the end of life

Combe death, we now remember Spencer – phrenology and secularism lost, but they changed state of mind. Phrenology prepared for Darwinism by making human abilities part of nature – Darwin's comparative anatomy it sense that we are part of nature. But clearly not designed by God. This making the true end of phrenology as a science.

Spencer essentially recoded the kind of arguments Combe and his followers made famous, as I have shown elsewhere, his intellectual education transforming phrenology to evolutionism – laissez-faire writ large. The same true of this advocacy of physiology, written as a review of Andrew Combe's book, his moral education, less successfully, transposing the wisdom of God's natural economy to the efficacy of nature while his What Knowledge is most worth, has clear parallels to even the concept of the unknowable at he heart of Spencer's First Principles, is not unlike Combe's separation of secular knowledge from spiritual faith.

Spencer, quite rightly well known as the Victorian Aristotle, a man of extraordinary mind and articulate – but Combe was also great clarity – not known, reduced to a minor figure in history of the day – yet there are few who could have had a greater influence on the public mind, especially in the field of education. As Cobden's estimate of Combe.

Cobden quote, "the second rate man."

Morley Life of Richard Cobden. Boston 1881, pp64-65.

Gibbon, Life of Combe, II, 137.

Gibbon, Life of Combe, II, 137.

George Combe, "Remarks on Education in America" Edinburgh Review (**) July 1841, 260-268; 261.

Ibid. 266.

Ibid.

George Combe, "Remarks on Education in America" Edinburgh Review (**) July 1841, 260-268; 264.

. George Combe, "Education in America-State of Massachusetts" Edinburgh Review 63 (1841): 486-582.

Mann to Combe, October 13th, 1841.

II, 22.

George Combe "Remarks on National Education" (Edinburgh, 1847); George Combe, "What a Secular Education Should Embrace?" (Edinburgh, 1848).

II, 194.

II, 299.

. George Combe, Remarks on National Education (Edinburgh, 1847); George Combe, What a Secular Education Should Embrace? (Edinburgh, 1848).

. Combe believed that his impasse with Cobden over the issue of secular education resulted from the latter's extremely large organ of Veneration. As Cobden explained to Combe, he believed this estimation was "a triumph for phrenology, for you could have formed no such notion from anything you have seen or heard of me." Quoted in Gibbon, Life of Combe II, 218.

. On Combe's dealings with Lombe see De Guistino, The Conquest of Mind, 209-219.

. P.N. Farrar, "American Influence on the Movement for a National System of Elementary Education in England and Wales, 1830-1870″ British Journal of Educational Studies xiv (Nov. 1965).

Lovett quoted in Brian Harrison "Kindness and Reason: William Lovett and Education" History Today (March 1982): 18; Lovett and Collins, "Chartism"; 229-286.

. On William Ellis, see Stewart and McCann, The Educational Innovators, 326-41.

. As even a cursory reading of "Chartism" reveals, Lovett was not exaggerating when he told Combe "whatever little good I have been able to achieve I am widely indebted to yourself." Lovett and his fellow author, John Collins, start out by defining education as "all those means which are used to developed the various faculties of mind and body, and so train them, that the child shall become a healthy, intelligent, moral, and useful member of society." "By the faculties of the mind" they meant "all those mental powers which perceive, reflect, and promote us to action." Because "in the proper use and exercise of every part of the mind and body, the vital current flows in that direction, not only to repair the waste consequent on that exercise, but to enlarge and strengthen it" each faculty should be trained through "a course of discipline," that will "habituate it to form certain operations with ease and effect." Applying this mental law to the training of the "intellectual, moral, and animal faculties" Lovett and Collins explain how the use of the object lesson can aid the unfolding of the perceptive, comparative and reflective powers; the importance of a correct moral environment, and the need for healthy working conditions, exercise and a knowledge of the body. Finally, while recognizing that the faculties of individuals may differ, the authors claim that all can enjoy a happy life and be useful members of society if they "follow the physical laws of their nature, the social institutions of man, and the moral laws of God." Lovett quoted in Brian Harrison "Kindness and Reason: William Lovett and Education" History Today (March 1982): 18; Lovett and Collins, "Chartism"; 229-286.

. Quoted in Stewart and McCann, Educational Innovators, 333.

. Jolly, Education, 201-59.

. Ibid., 213.

. Ibid. 237.

. George Combe, "On Secular Education" in Educating Our Masters, ed. David A. Reeder (Old Working, 1980), 43-68.

. Gibbon, Life of Combe II, 246.