CHARACTER-DIVERS--_continued_.
"Let the remedies employed be adapted to the complaint and to the
constitution of the patient, and be careful that in curing one
disease you do not sow the seeds of another more dangerous."
One of the duties of the character-divers is to suggest, and often to
carry out, the measures for curing the child, for in our planet the mode
of correcting faults is a matter of great solicitude, lest the means
adopted, instead of checking and eradicating, tend to confirm and
develop the evil tendency, or, it may be, implant other evils more fatal
than those eradicated.
The remedies employed for curing the boy's faults vary with his
temperament and general characteristics. The same fault would be treated
very differently in the stupid and in the intelligent boy. Where there
was difficulty of impression, the labour would be like working on stone,
whilst the lightest touch and mildest measures will often suffice with
the intelligent.
The remedies vary again with the kind, degree, and cause of the fault:
take for instance the ordinary fault of laziness. This would be treated
very differently when it arose from mental defects--from a tendency to
love other things, great or grovelling, or from a sluggish or overactive
digestion.
I may here mention that a general feature in the correction of faults is
the absence of violent punishment. We wish to raise and not degrade our
children, and perhaps implant the seeds of cruelty. We do not correct
even our animals by blows. Horses, for instance, are never struck.
Whips, with a small thong at the ends, are used only to flourish and to
make sounds which the horse knows, but they are not used to strike the
animal. Other modes are employed for curing viciousness, each according
to the nature of the vice. In the case of a kicking horse, he is placed
in a machine which is closed on him, the machine being so constructed
that when shut it effectually prevents the animal moving, and he is kept
there in the same position for hours. If, when taken out, he again kicks
he is placed back again immediately. The process is repeated when
necessary over and over again, until the very sight of the machine will
completely cow the animal, and he is effectually cured.
The laws are very severe against those who would ill-treat an animal,
but there is now no need to put them in force.
We never punish by the imposition of tasks, our aim being to inculcate
the love of study, and encourage the child to regard his work as a
favour and a privilege. On the contrary we now punish the student rather
by taking away the old than by imposing new school work; and this is so
effected that the boy, though at first delighted, soon thirsts to resume
his studies.
In many cases the pupil is not allowed even to know that he is
punished,--_i.e._, why the discipline is changed,--lest he should become
attached to a fault for which he has suffered and, as it were, paid
dearly; lest, too, the excitement of eluding detection should make it
pleasurable to transgress when the immediate pressure is removed, and he
should thus become schooled in untruthfulness and deceit.
The character-divers generally effect the child's correction by
gentleness, and eventually bringing him to loathe the bad and love the
good. Time, labour, and attention are bestowed unsparingly, and, however
small the germ, the evil tendency is never left until, when this is
possible, it is completely eradicated. In certain cases, where the
footprint of nature is too firmly impressed, the efforts are continued
until other and opposing qualities have been developed, and the moral
patient has acquired such control over himself as to be able, in moments
of temptation and impulse, to dominate the disturbing propensity.
Even after the fault seems to have been eradicated, the patient is for
some time subjected to various tests and temptations before he is
pronounced cured. We do not trust to superficial appearances.
Similar precautions were taken in the cure of adult offenders against
the laws, but as soon as my plans had time to operate, offences by
adults were of rare occurrence.
When a child gives evidence of remarkable genius, he is watched with
more than jealous care, with a view to his superior refinement, and
other qualities which we like to see in harmony. We do not like to see,
as it were, a garment made partly of rich brocade and partly of common
material.
The character-divers, too, are greatly assisted in their observations by
an establishment attached to each school called "The Amusement Gallery,"
in which after a certain time the bent of the child, his versatility,
capriciousness, constancy of purpose, and other qualities and defects
are shown in his selection and continued or interrupted pursuit of any
particular occupation or amusement.
It is scarcely possible to overrate the importance of acting with
judgment towards children.
From the smallest beginnings, incurable defects of mind and permanent
disease of body will gather strength, grow and obtain the mastery, till
they carry off the sufferer, or implant vices that, like evil spirits,
will torture the victim during his life's career.
Nothing is spared in the education of the future man and mother of men.
In the child is seen the parent of other generations, one who, as he is
well or ill-directed, will strengthen or weaken the great work of human
happiness, bearing with him a blessing or a curse for the community.
Therefore whatever may be the pains or expenditure required in the cure
of incipient faults, as of incipient disease, we know that society will
be repaid more than a thousand-fold in the happiness of its members, in
evil prevented and good propagated, in the numbers of men of talent and
genius whose works, teeming with great results, will be thus saved to
the State.
But for the character-divers the services of numbers of men of
extraordinary genius would have been lost to the State, and our world's
progress in science, inventions, and happiness retarded for centuries.
Nay, perhaps the then comparative civilization would have been thrown
back into barbarism, through the destructive play of bad passions and
disappointed hopes.
Numbers who, if their early faults had grown into confirmed vices, would
later have led a life of crime, and become inhabitants of dungeons and
emissaries of evil, now grew into men of great eminence. The germ of
evil propensities was destroyed, the exuberant motive power of their
nature regulated and turned to good, by means which the character-divers
thoroughly understood.
Amongst faults, the germs of which occupied the attention of the Djarke,
are the following:
Untruthfulness, dishonesty, discontent, pride, vanity, boasting,
cunning, envy, deceit, whether prejudice, self-deceit, or the wish to
deceive others; nervousness or fear, inducing reticence and concealment
of faults, excess of modesty or the occasional tendency of persons of
genius to underrate their own powers, inattention to studies, want of
application, power to learn too easily, lack of retentive memory,
exaggeration and boldness, bad temper, sullenness, disposition to
quarrel, cowardice, cruelty, caprice as distinct from versatility,
selfishness, greediness, laziness, and its various causes, and generally
the germs of all faults and vicious propensities, which, if not cured at
an early age, would grow into tenacious vices.
From the precautions taken in Montalluyah the schools have become real
nurseries, where the pupil is endowed with knowledge adapted to his
capacity and natural bent, strengthened and graced with valuable habits
and stores of physical and intellectual power.