‘HABIT IS TEN NATURES’
I.--EDUCATION BASED UPON NATURAL LAW
=A Healthy Brain.=--What I desire to set before the reader is a method
of education based upon natural law. In the first place, we have
considered some of the conditions to be observed with a view to keep
the brain in healthy working order; for it is upon the possession
of an active, duly nourished brain that the possibility of a sound
education depends.
=Out-of-Door Life.=--The consideration of _out-of-door life_, in
developing a method of education, comes second in order; because my
object is to show that the chief function of the child--his business
in the world during the first six or seven years of his life--is to
find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means
of his five senses; that he has an insatiable appetite for knowledge
got in this way; and that, therefore, the endeavour of his parents
should be to put him in the way of making acquaintance freely with
Nature and natural objects; that, in fact, the intellectual education
of the young child should lie in the free exercise of perceptive
power, because the first stages of mental effort are marked by the
extreme activity of this power; and the wisdom of the educator is to
follow the lead of Nature in the evolution of the complete human being.
The next subject for consideration--a rather dry psycho-physiological
one--seems to me, all the same, to be very well worthy of attention as
striking the keynote of a reasonable method of education.
=Habit the Instrument by which Parents Work.=--‘Habit is TEN
natures!’ If I could but make others see with my eyes how much this
saying should mean to the educator! How habit, in the hands of the
mother, is as his wheel to the potter, his knife to the carver--the
instrument by means of which she turns out the design she has already
conceived in her brain. Observe, the material is there to begin with;
his wheel will not enable the potter to produce a porcelain cup cut
of coarse clay; but the instrument is as necessary as the material or
the design. It is unpleasant to speak of one’s self, but if the reader
will allow me, I should like to run over the steps by which I have
been brought to look upon habit as the means whereby the parent may
make almost anything he chooses of his child. That which has become
the dominant idea of one person’s life, if it be launched suddenly
at another, conveys no very great depth or weight of meaning to the
second person--he wants to get at it by degrees, to see the steps by
which the other has travelled. Therefore, I shall venture to show
how I arrived at my present position, which is, from _one_ of
the three possible points of view--The formation of habits _is_
education, and _Education is the formation of habits_.
II.--THE CHILDREN HAVE NO SELF-COMPELLING POWER
=An Educational Cul-de-sac.=--Some years ago I was accustomed to hear,
‘Habit is TEN natures’ delivered from the pulpit on at least
one Sunday out of four. I had at the time just begun to teach, and was
young and enthusiastic in my work. It was to my mind a great thing to
be a teacher; it was impossible but that the teacher should leave his
stamp on the children. His own was the fault if anything went wrong,
if any child did badly in school or out of it. There was no degree
of responsibility to which youthful ardour was not equal. But, all
this zeal notwithstanding, the disappointing thing was, that nothing
extraordinary happened. The children were good on the whole, because
they were the children of parents who had themselves been brought up
with some care; but it was plain that they behaved very much as ‘’twas
their nature to.’ The faults they had, they kept; the virtues they
had were exercised just as fitfully as before. The good, meek little
girl still told fibs. The bright, generous child was incurably idle.
In lessons it was the same thing; the dawdling child went on dawdling,
the dull child became no brighter. It was very disappointing. The
children, no doubt, ‘got on’--a little; but each one of them had the
makings in her of a noble character, of a fine mind, and where was the
lever to lift each of these little worlds? Such a lever there must be.
This horse-in-a-mill round of geography and French, history and sums,
was no more than playing at education; for who remembers the scraps of
knowledge he laboured over as a child? and would not the application
of a few hours in later life effect more than a year’s drudgery at any
one subject in childhood? If education is to secure the step-by-step
progress of the individual and the race, it must mean something over
and above the daily plodding at small tasks which goes by the name.
=Love, Law, and Religion as Educational Forces.=--Looking for guidance
to the literature of education, I learned much from various sources,
though I failed to find what seemed to me an authoritative guide, that
is, one whose thought embraced the possibilities contained in the
human nature of a child, and, at the same time, measured the scope
of education. I saw how religious teaching helped the children, gave
them power and motives for continuous effort, and raised their desires
towards the best things. I saw in how far law restrained from evil,
and love impelled towards good. But with these great aids from without
and from above, there was still the depressing sense of labouring
at education in the dark; the advance made by the young people in
moral, and even in intellectual, power was like that of a door on its
hinges--a swing forward to-day and back again to-morrow, with little
sensible progress from year to year beyond that of being able to do
harder sums and read harder books.
=Why Children are incapable of Steady Effort.=--Consideration made the
reason of the failure plain: there was a warm glow of goodness at the
heart of every one of the children, but they were all incapable of
steady effort, because they had no strength of will, no power to make
themselves do that which they knew they ought to do. Here, no doubt,
come in the functions of parents and teachers; they should be able to
make the child do that which he lacks the power to compel himself to.
But it were poor training that should keep the child dependent upon
personal influence. It is the business of education to find some way
of supplementing that weakness of will which is the bane of most of us
as well as of the children.
=Children should be saved the Effort of Decision.=--That the effort
of decision is the most exhausting effort of life, has been well said
from the pulpit; and if that remain true about ourselves, even when
the decision is about trifling matters of going or coming, buying or
not buying, it surely is not just to leave the children all the labour
of an effort of will whenever they have to choose between the right
and the wrong.
III.--WHAT IS ‘NATURE’?
‘Habit is TEN natures,’ went on being proclaimed in my ears;
and at last it came home to me as a weighty saying, which might
contain the educational ‘Open, sesame!’ I was in quest of. In the
first place, what is Nature, and what, precisely, is Habit?
It _is_ an astonishing thing, when we consider, what the child
is, irrespective of race, country, or kindred, simply in right of his
birth as a human being.
=All Persons born with the same Primary Desires.=--That we all have
the same instincts and appetites, we are prepared to allow, but that
the principles of action which govern all men everywhere are primarily
the same, is a little startling; that, for instance, the same desires
stir in the breasts of savage and of sage alike; that the desire of
knowledge, which shows itself in the child’s curiosity about things
and his eager use of his eyes, is equally active everywhere; that the
desire of society, which you may see in two babies presented to one
another and all agog with glee and friendliness, is the cause, alike,
of village communities amongst savage tribes and of the philosophical
meetings of the learned; that everywhere is felt the desire of
esteem--a wonderful power in the hands of the educator, making a word
of praise or blame more powerful as a motive than any fear or hope of
punishment or reward.
=And Affections.=--And it is not only the same desires; all people,
everywhere, have the same affections and passions which act in
the same way under similar provocation: joy and grief, love and
resentment, benevolence, sympathy, fear, and much else, are common to
all of us. So, too, of conscience, the sense of duty.
=Content of the most Elemental Notion of Human Nature.=--Dr
Livingstone mentions that the only addition he felt called upon to
make to the moral code of certain of the Zambesi tribes (however
little they observed their own law) was, that a man should not have
more than one wife. “Evil speaking, lying, hatred, disobedience
to parents, neglect of them,” were all known to be sin by these
dark peoples whom civilised or Christian teaching had never before
reached. Not only is a sense of duty common to mankind, but the deeper
consciousness of God, however vague such consciousness may be. And all
this and much more goes to make up the most elemental notion of human
nature.
=Nature plus Heredity.=--Then, _heredity_ comes in, and here, if
you please, _is_ ten natures: who is to deal with the child who
is resentful, or stubborn, or reckless, because it is born in him,
his mother’s nature or his grandfather’s? Think of the trick of the
eye, the action of the hand, repeated from father to son; the peculiar
character of the handwriting, traceable, as Miss Power Cobbe tells us
is the case in her family, for instance, through five generations;
the artistic temperament, the taste for music or drawing, running
in families: here you get Nature with a twist, confirmed, sealed,
riveted, utterly proof, you would say, against any attempt to alter or
modify it.
=Plus Physical Conditions.=--And, once more, physical conditions come
into force. The puny, feeble child and the sturdy urchin who never
ails must necessarily differ from one another in the strength of their
desires and emotions.
=Human Nature the Sum of certain Attributes.=--What, then, with the
natural desires, affections, and emotions common to the whole race,
what with the tendencies which each family derives by descent, and
those peculiarities which the individual owes to his own constitution
of body and brain,--human nature, the sum of all these, makes out for
itself a strong case; so much so, that we are inclined to think the
best that can be done is to let it alone, to let every child develop
unhindered according to the elements of character and disposition that
are in him.
=The Child must not be left to his Human Nature.=--This is precisely
what half the parents in the world, and three-fourths of the teachers,
are content to do; and what is the consequence? That the world
_is_ making advances, but the progress is, for the most part,
amongst the few whose parents have taken their education seriously in
hand; while the rest, who have been allowed to _stay where they
were_, be no more, or no better than Nature made them, act as a
heavy drag: for, indeed, the fact is, that they do not stay where
they were; it is unchangeably true that the child who is not being
constantly raised to a higher and a higher platform will sink to a
lower and a lower. Wherefore, it is as much the parent’s duty to
educate his child into moral strength and purpose and intellectual
activity as it is to feed him and clothe him; and that _in spite
of his nature_, if it must be so. It is true that here and there
circumstances step in and ‘make a man’ of the boy whose parents have
failed to bring him under discipline; but this is a fortuitous aid
which the educator is no way warranted to count upon.
I was beginning to see my way--not yet out of the psychological
difficulty, which, so far as I was concerned, blocked the way to any
real education; but now I could put my finger on the place, and that
was something. Thus:--
The will of the child is pitifully feeble, weaker in the children of
the weak, stronger in the children of the strong, but hardly ever to
be counted upon as a _power_ in education.
The nature of the child--his human nature--being the sum of what he
is as a human being, and what he is in right of the stock he comes
of, and what he is as the result of his own physical and mental
constitution--this nature is incalculably strong.
=Problem before the Educator.=--The problem before the educator is
to give the child control over his own nature, to enable him to hold
himself in hand as much in regard to the traits we call good, as to
those we call evil:--many a man makes shipwreck on the rock of what he
grew up to think his characteristic virtue--his open-handedness, for
instance.
=Divine Grace works on the Lines of Human Effort.=--In looking for a
solution of this problem, I do not undervalue the Divine grace--far
otherwise; but we do not always make enough of the fact that Divine
grace is exerted on the lines of enlightened human effort; that the
parent, for instance, who takes the trouble to understand what he is
about in educating his child, deserves, and assuredly gets, support
from above; and that Rebecca, let us say, had no right to bring up her
son to be “thou worm, Jacob,” in the trust that Divine grace would,
speaking reverently, pull him through. Being a pious man, the son of
pious parents, he was pulled through, but his days, he complains at
the end, were “few and evil.”
=The Trust of Parents must not be Supine.=--And indeed this is what
too many Christian parents expect: they let a child grow free as the
wild bramble, putting forth unchecked whatever is in him--thorn,
coarse flower, insipid fruit,--trusting, they will tell you, that
the grace of God will prune and dig and prop the wayward branches
lying prone. And their trust is not always misplaced; but the poor
_man_ endures anguish, is torn asunder in the process of recovery
which his parents might have spared him had they trained the early
shoots which should develop by-and-by into the character of their
_child_.
Nature then, strong as she is, is not invincible; and, at her best,
Nature is not to be permitted to ride rampant. Bit and bridle, hand
and voice, will get the utmost of endeavour out of her if her training
be taken in hand in time; but let Nature run wild, like the forest
ponies, and not spur nor whip will break her in.
IV.--HABIT MAY SUPPLANT ‘NATURE’
‘Habit is _ten_ natures.’ If that be true, strong as nature is,
habit is not only as strong, but _tenfold_ as strong. Here, then,
have we a stronger than he, able to overcome this strong man armed.
=Habit runs on the Lines of Nature.=--But habit runs on the lines of
nature: the cowardly child _habitually_ lies that he may escape
blame; the loving child has a hundred endearing _habits_; the
good-natured child has a _habit_ of giving; the selfish child, a
_habit_ of keeping. Habit, working thus according to nature, is
simply nature in action, growing strong by exercise.
=But Habit may be a Lever.=--But habit, to be the lever to lift the
child, must work contrary to nature, or at any rate, independently of
her.
Directly we begin to look out for the working of habit on these lines,
examples crowd upon us: there are the children trained in careful
habits, who never soil their clothes; those trained in reticent
habits, who never speak of what is done at home, and answer indiscreet
questions with ‘I don’t know’; there are the children brought up in
courteous habits, who make way for their elders with gentle grace,
and more readily for the poor woman with the basket than for the
well-dressed lady; and there are children trained in grudging habits,
who never offer to yield, or go, or do.
=A Mother forms her Children’s Habits involuntarily.=--Such habits as
these, good, bad, or indifferent, are they natural to the children?
No, but they are what their mothers have brought them up to; and as a
matter of fact, there is _nothing_ which a mother cannot bring
her child up to, and there is hardly a mother anywhere who has not
some two or three--crotchets sometimes, principles sometimes--which
her children never violate. So that it comes to this--given, a mother
with liberal views on the subject of education, and she simply cannot
help working her own views into her children’s habits; given, on the
other hand, a mother whose final question is, ‘What will people say?
what will people think? how will it look?’ and the children grow up
with habits of seeming, and not of being; they are content to appear
well-dressed, well-mannered, and well-intentioned to outsiders, with
very little effort after beauty, order, and goodness at home, and in
each other’s eyes.
=Habit forces Nature into New Channels.=--The extraordinary power
of habit in forcing nature into new channels hardly requires
illustration; we have only to see a small boy at a circus riding two
barebacked ponies with a foot on the back of each, or a pantomime
fairy dancing on air, or a clown behaving like an indiarubber ball,
or any of the thousand feats of skill and dexterity which we pay our
shillings to see--mental feats as well as bodily, though, happily,
these are the rarer--to be convinced that exactly anything may be
accomplished by training, that is, the cultivation of persistent
habits. And the power of habit is not seen in human beings alone. The
cat goes in search of her dinner always at the same time and to the
same place--that is, if it is usual to feed her in one spot. Indeed,
the habit of place is so much to the cat, that she will often rather
die of famine than forsake the house to which she is accustomed. As
for the dog, he is still more a ‘bundle of habits’ than his master.
Scatter the crumbs for the sparrows at nine o’clock every morning,
and at nine o’clock they will come for their breakfast, crumbs or no
crumbs. Darwin inclines to think that the terror and avoidance shown
towards man by the wild birds and lesser animals is simply a matter
of _transmitted_ habit; he tells us how he landed upon certain
of the Pacific islands where the birds had never seen man before, and
they lighted upon him and flew about him with utter fearlessness. To
come nearer home, what evidence of the mastery of habit is more sad
and more overwhelming than the habits of the drunkard, for instance,
persisted in, in spite of reason, conscience, purpose, religion, every
motive which should influence a thinking being?
=Parents and Teachers must lay down Lines of Habit.=--All this is
nothing new; we have always known that ‘use is second nature,’ and
that ‘man is a bundle of habits.’ It was not the fact, but the
application of the fact, and the physiology of habit, that were new
and exceedingly valuable ideas to me, and I hope they may be of some
use to the reader. It was new to me, for instance, to perceive that
it rests with parents and teachers to lay down lines of habit on
which the life of the child may run henceforth with little jolting or
miscarriage, and may advance in the right direction with the minimum
of effort.
V.--THE LAYING DOWN OF LINES OF HABIT
‘=Begin it, and the thing will be completed!=’ is infallibly true
of every mental and moral habitude: completed, not on the lines you
foresee and intend, but on the lines appropriate and necessary to
that particular habitude. In the phrase ‘unconscious cerebration’
we are brought face to face with the fact that, whatever seed of
thought or feeling you implant in a child--whether through inheritance
or by early training--grows, completes itself, and begets after
its kind, even as does a corporeal organism. It is a marvellous
and beautiful thing to perceive an idea--when the idea itself is a
fine one--developing within you of its own accord, to find your pen
writing down sentences whose logical sequence delights you, and yet
in the conception of which you have had no conscious part. When the
experienced writer ‘reels off’ in this fashion, he knows that so far
as the run of the words, the ordering of the ideas, go, his work
will need no revision. So fine a thing is this, that the lingering
fallacy of the infallible reason established itself thereupon. The
philosopher, who takes pleasure in observing the ways of his own
mind, is a thinker of high thoughts, and he is apt to forget that
the thought which defiles a man behaves in precisely the same way as
that which purifies: the one, as the other, develops, matures, and
increases after its kind.
=We Think, as we are accustomed to Think.=--How does this bear on the
practical work of bringing up children? In this way: We think, _as
we are accustomed to think_; ideas come and go and carry on a
ceaseless traffic in the rut--let us call it--you have made for them
in the very nerve substance of the brain. You do not deliberately
intend to think these thoughts; you may, indeed, object strongly to
the line they are taking (two ‘trains’ of thought going on at one and
the same time!), and objecting, you may be able to barricade the way,
to put up ‘No Road’ in big letters, and to compel the busy populace
of the brain-world to take another route. But who is able for these
things? Not the child, immature of will, feeble in moral power,
unused to the weapons of the spiritual warfare. He depends upon his
parents; it rests with them to initiate the thoughts he shall think,
the desires he shall cherish, the feelings he shall allow. Only to
initiate; no more is permitted to them; but from this initiation will
result the habits of thought and feeling which govern the man--his
_character_, that is to say. But is not this assuming too much,
seeing that, to sum up roughly all we understand by heredity, a child
is born with his future in his hands? The child is born, doubtless,
with the tendencies which should shape his future; but every tendency
has its branch roads, its good or evil outcome; and to put the child
on the right track for the fulfilment of the possibilities inherent in
_him_, is the vocation of the parent.
=Direction of Lines of Habit.=--This relation of habit to human
life--as the rails on which it runs to a locomotive--is perhaps the
most suggestive and helpful to the educator; for just as it is on the
whole easier for the locomotive to pursue its way on the rails than
to take a disastrous run off them, so it is easier for the child to
follow lines of habit carefully laid down than to run off these lines
at his peril. It follows that this business of laying down lines
towards the unexplored country of the child’s future is a very serious
and responsible one for the parent. It rests with him to consider
well the tracks over which the child should travel with profit and
pleasure; and, along these tracks, to lay down lines so invitingly
smooth and easy that the little traveller is going upon them at full
speed without stopping to consider whether or no he chooses to go that
way.
=Habit and Free-will.=--But,--supposing that the doing of a
certain action a score or two of times in unbroken sequence forms
a habit which it is as easy to follow as not; that, persist still
further in the habit _without lapses_, and it becomes second
nature, quite difficult to shake off; continue it further, through
a course of years, and the habit has the strength of _ten_
natures, you cannot break through it without doing real violence to
yourself;--grant all this, and also that it is possible to form in
the child _the habit_ of doing and saying, even of thinking
and feeling, all that it is desirable he should do or say, think or
feel,--and do you not take away the child’s free-will, make a mere
automaton of him by this excessive culture?
=Habit rules ninety-nine in a hundred of our Thoughts and Acts.=--In
the first place, whether you choose or no to take any trouble about
the formation of his _habits_, it is habit, all the same, which
will govern ninety-nine one-hundredths of the child’s life: he
_is_ the mere automaton you describe. As for the child’s becoming
the creature of habit, that is not left with the parent to determine.
We are all mere creatures of habit. We think our accustomed thoughts,
make our usual small talk, go through the trivial round, the common
task, without any self-determining effort of will at all. If it were
not so--if we had to think, to deliberate, about each operation of the
bath or the table--life would not be worth having; the perpetually
repeated effort of decision would wear us out. But, let us be
thankful, life is not thus laborious. For a hundred times we act or
think, it is not necessary to choose, to will, say, more than once.
And the little emergencies, which compel an act of will, will fall in
the children’s lives just about as frequently as in our own. These
we cannot save them from, nor is it desirable that we should. What we
can do for them is to secure that they have habits which shall lead
them in ways of order, propriety, and virtue, instead of leaving their
wheel of life to make ugly ruts in miry places.
=Habit powerful even where the Will decides.=--And then, even in
emergencies, in every sudden difficulty and temptation that requires
an act of will, why, conduct is still apt to run on the lines of
the familiar habit. The boy who has been accustomed to find both
profit and pleasure in his books does not fall easily into idle ways
because he is attracted by an idle schoolfellow. The girl who has been
carefully trained to speak the exact truth simply does not think of a
lie as a ready means of getting out of a scrape, coward as she may be.
But this doctrine of habit, is it, after all, any more than an
empirical treatment of the child’s symptoms? Why should the doing of
an act or the thinking of a thought, say, a score of times in unbroken
succession, have any tendency to make the doing of that act or the
thinking of that thought a part of the child’s nature? We may accept
the doctrine as an act of faith resting on experience; but if we could
discover the _raison d’être_ of this enormous force of habit it
would be possible to go to work on the laying down of habits with real
purpose and method.
VI.--THE PHYSIOLOGY OF HABIT
A work of Dr Carpenter’s was perhaps the first which gave me the
clue I was in search of. In his _Mental Physiology_--a most
interesting book, by the way--he works out the analogy between mental
and physical activity, and shows that the correspondence in effect is
due to a correspondence in cause.
=Growing Tissues form themselves to Modes of Action.=--To state
roughly the doctrine of the school Dr Carpenter represents--the
tissues, as muscular tissue, for instance, undergo constant waste and
as constant reparation. Even those modes of muscular action which we
regard as natural to us, as walking and standing erect, are in reality
the results of a laborious education; quite as much so as many modes
of action which we consciously acquire, as writing or dancing; but
the acquired modes become perfectly easy and natural. Why? Because
it is the law of the constantly growing tissues that they should
form themselves according to the modes of action required of them.
In a case where the brain is repeatedly sending down to the muscles,
under nervous control as they are, the message to have a certain
action done, that action becomes automatic in the lower centre, and
the faintest suggestion from outside comes to produce it without
the intervention of the brain. Thus, the joints and muscles of the
child’s hand very soon accommodate themselves to the mode of action
required of them in holding and guiding the pen. Observe, it is not
that the child learns with his mind how to use his pen, in spite of
his muscles; but that the newly growing muscles themselves take form
according to the action required of them. And here is the explanation
of all the mountebank feats which appear simply impossible to the
untrained looker-on. They are impossible to him, because his joints
and muscles have not the same powers which have been produced in the
mountebank by a process of early training.
=Therefore Children should learn Dancing, Swimming, etc., at an Early
Age.=--So much for mere bodily activities. And here we have the reason
why children should learn dancing, riding, swimming, calisthenics,
every form of activity which requires a training of the muscles, at
an early age: the fact being, that muscles and joints have not merely
to conform themselves to new uses, but to grow to a modified pattern;
and this growth and adaptation take place with the greatest facility
in early youth. Of course, the man whose muscles have kept the habit
of adaptation picks up new games, new muscular exercises, without very
great labour. But teach a ploughman to write, and you see the enormous
physical difficulty which unaccustomed muscles have in growing to any
new sort of effort. Here we see how important it is to keep watch
over the habits of enunciation, carriage of the head, and so on,
which the child is forming hour by hour. The poke, the stoop, the
indistinct utterance, is not a mere trick to be left off at pleasure
‘when he is older and knows better,’ but is all the time growing into
him becoming a part of himself, because it is registered in the very
substance of his spinal cord. The part of his nervous system where
consciousness resides (the brain) has long ago given a standing order,
and such are the complications of the administration, that to recall
the order would mean the absolute re-making of the parts concerned.
And to correct bad habits of speaking, for instance, it will not be
enough for the child to intend to speak plainly and to try to speak
plainly; he will not be able to do so habitually until some degree of
new growth has taken place in the organs of voice whilst he is making
efforts to form the new habit.
=Moral and Mental Habits make their Mark upon Physical Tissues.=--But,
practically, everybody knows that the body, and every part of the
body, accommodates itself very readily to the uses it is put to: we
know that if a child accustom herself to stand on one foot, thus
pushing up one shoulder, the habit will probably end in curvature
of the spine; that to permit drooping shoulders, and, consequently,
contracted chest, is to prepare the way for lung disease. The physical
consequences of bad habits of this sort are so evident, that we cannot
blind ourselves to the relation of cause and effect. What we are
less prepared to admit is, that habits which do not appear to be in
any sense physical--a flippant habit, a truthful habit, an orderly
habit--should also _make their mark upon a physical tissue_, and
that it is to this physical effect the enormous strength of habit is
probably due. Yet when we consider that the brain, the physical brain,
is the exceedingly delicate organ by means of which we think and feel
and desire, love and hate and worship, it is not surprising that that
organ should be modified by the work it has to do; to put the matter
picturesquely, it is as if every familiar train of thought made a rut
in the nervous substance of the brain into which the thoughts run
lightly of their own accord, and out of which they can only be got by
an effort of will.
=Persistent Trains of Thought.=--Thus, the mistress of the house
knows that when her thoughts are free to take their own course, they
run to cares of the house or the larder, to to-morrow’s dinner or
the winter’s clothing; that is, thought runs into the rut which has
been, so to speak, worn for it by constant repetition. The mother’s
thoughts run on her children, the painter’s on pictures, the poet’s on
poems; those of the anxious head of the house on money cares, it may
be, until in times of unusual pressure the thoughts beat, beat, beat
in that well-worn rut of ways and means, and decline to run in any
other channel, till the poor man loses his reason, simply because he
cannot get his thoughts out of that one channel made in the substance
of his brain. And, indeed, “that way madness lies” for every one of
us, in the persistent preying of any one train of thought upon the
brain tissue. Pride, resentment, jealousy, an invention that a man has
laboured over, an opinion he has conceived, any line of thought which
he has no longer the power to divert, will endanger a man’s sanity.
=Incessant Regeneration of Brain Tissue.=--If we love, hate, think,
feel, worship, at the expense of actual physical effort on the part of
the brain, and consequent waste of tissue, how enormous must be the
labour of that organ with which we, in fact, _do_ everything,
even many of those acts whose final execution falls to the hands
or feet! It is true: and to repair this excessive waste, the brain
consumes the lion’s share of the nourishment provided for the body.
As we have already seen, fully a sixth or a fifth of all the blood in
the body goes to repair the waste in the king’s house; in other words,
_new brain tissue_ is being constantly formed at a startlingly
rapid rate: one wonders at what age the child has no longer any part
left of that brain with which he was born.
The new tissue repeats the old, but not quite exactly. Just as a
new muscular growth adapts itself to any new exercise required of
it, so the new brain tissue is supposed to ‘grow to’ any habit of
thought in force during the time of growth--‘thought’ here including,
of course, every exercise of mind and soul. “The cerebrum of man
grows to the modes of thought in which it is habitually exercised,”
says an able physiologist; or, in the words of Dr Carpenter, “Any
sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated, tends to
perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted
to _think_, _feel_, or _do_ what we have been before accustomed to
think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously
formed _purpose_ or anticipation of results. For there is no reason to
regard the cerebrum as an exception to the general principle, that
whilst each part of the organism tends to _form itself_ in accordance
with the mode in which it is habitually exercised, this tendency will
be specially strong in the nervous apparatus, in virtue of that
_incessant regeneration_ which is the very condition of its functional
activity. It scarcely, indeed, admits of a doubt, that every state of
ideational consciousness which is either _very strong_ or is
_habitually repeated_, leaves an organic impression on the cerebrum,
in virtue of which the same state may be reproduced at any future time
in correspondence to a suggestion fitted to excite it.”
=Artificial Reflex Actions may be Acquired.=--Or, to take Huxley’s way
of putting the case:--
“By the help of the brain we may acquire an infinity of
_artificial_ reflex actions; that is to say, an action may
require all our attention and all our volition for its
first, second, or third performance, but by frequent
repetition it becomes, in a manner, part of our
organisation, and is performed without volition or even
consciousness.
“As every one knows, it takes a soldier a long time to learn
his drill--for instance, to put himself into the attitude of
‘attention’ at the instant the word of command is heard. But
after a time the sound of the word gives rise to the act,
whether the soldier be thinking of it or not. There is a
story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true,
of a practical joker who, seeing a discharged veteran
carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out ‘Attention!’
whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost
his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been
thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man’s
nervous structure.
“The possibility of all education (of which military drill
is only one particular form) is based upon the existence of
this power which the nervous system possesses, of organising
conscious actions into more or less unconscious, or reflex,
operations. It may be down laid as a rule, that if any two
mental states be called up together, or in succession, with
due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of
the one of them will suffice to call up the other, and that
whether we desire it or not.”
=Intellectual and Moral Education.=--“The object of intellectual
education is to create such indissoluble associations of our ideas of
things, in the order and relation in which they occur in nature; that
of a moral education is to unite as fixedly, the ideas of evil deeds
with those of pain and degradation, and of good actions with those of
pleasure and nobleness.”
But it is the intimate interlocking of mind and matter which is
more directly important to the educator--the idea which we have put
broadly under the (by no means scientifically accurate) figure of
a _rut_. Given, that the constant direction of the thoughts
produces a certain set in the tissues of the brain, this set is the
first trace of the rut or path, a line of least resistance, along
which the same impression, made another time, will find it easier to
travel than to take another path. So arises a right-of-way for any
given habit of action or thought.
=Character affected by Acquired Modification of Brain Tissue.=--What
follows? Why, that the actual conformation of the child’s brain
depends upon the habits which the parents permit or encourage; and
that the habits of the child produce the character of the man, because
certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on for
ever unless they should be displaced by other habits. Here is an end
to the easy philosophy of, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ ‘Oh, he’ll grow out
of it,’ ‘He’ll know better by-and-by,’ ‘He’s so young, what can we
expect?’ and so on. Every day, every hour, the parents are either
passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon
which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct
depend.
=Outside Influence.=--And here comes in the consideration of outside
influence. Nine times out of ten we begin to do a thing because we see
some one else do it; we go on doing it, and--there is the habit! If it
is so easy for ourselves to take up a new habit, it is tenfold as easy
for the children; and this is the real difficulty in the matter of the
education of habit. It is necessary that the mother be always on the
alert to nip in the bud the bad habit her children may be in the act
of picking up from servants or from other children.
VII.--THE FORMING OF A HABIT--‘SHUT THE DOOR
AFTER YOU’
“Do ye next thinge.”
“Lose this day loitering, and ’twill be the same story
To-morrow; and the next, more dilatory:
The indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost, lamenting o’er lost days,”
says Marlowe, who, like many of us, knew the misery of the
intellectual indolence which cannot brace itself to “Do ye next
thinge.” No question concerning the bringing up of children can,
conceivably, be trivial, but this, of dilatoriness, is very important.
The effort of decision, we have seen, is the greatest effort of life;
not the doing of the thing, but the making up of one’s mind as to
which thing to do first. It is commonly this sort of mental indolence,
born of indecision, which leads to dawdling habits. How is the
dilatory child to be cured? Time? She will know better as she grows
older? Not a bit of it: “And the next, _more_ dilatory” will be
the story of her days, except for occasional spurts. Punishments?
No; your dilatory person is a fatalist. ‘What can’t be cured must
be endured,’ he says, but he will endure without any effort to cure.
Rewards? No; to him a reward is a punishment presented under another
aspect: the possible reward he realises as actual; there it is, within
his grasp, so to say; in foregoing the reward he is punished; and he
bears the punishment. What remains to be tried when neither time,
reward, nor punishment is effectual? That panacea of the educationist:
‘One custom overcometh another.’ This inveterate dawdling is a habit
to be supplanted only by the contrary habit, and the mother must
devote herself for a few weeks to this cure as steadily and untiringly
as she would to the nursing of her child through measles. Having in
a few--the fewer the better--earnest words pointed out the miseries
that must arise from this fault, and the duty of overcoming it, and
having so got the (sadly feeble) will of the child on the side of
right-doing, she simply sees that for weeks together the fault does
not recur. The child goes to dress for a walk; she dreams over the
lacing of her boots--the tag in her fingers poised in mid air--but her
conscience is awake; she is constrained to look up, and her mother’s
eye is upon her, _hopeful_ and _expectant_. She answers to the rein
and goes on; midway, in the lacing of the second boot, there is
another pause, shorter this time; again she looks up, and again she
goes on. The pauses become fewer day by day, the efforts steadier, the
immature young will is being strengthened, the habit of prompt action
acquired. After that first talk, the mother would do well to
refrain from one more word on the subject; the eye (expectant, not
reproachful), and, where the child is far gone in a dream, the
lightest possible touch, are the only effectual instruments.
By-and-by, ‘Do you think you can get ready in five minutes to-day
without me?’ ‘Oh yes, mother.’ ‘Do not say “yes” unless you are quite
sure.’ ‘I _will_ try.’ And she tries, and succeeds. Now, the mother
will be tempted to relax her efforts--to overlook a little dawdling
because the dear child has been trying so hard. This is absolutely
fatal. The fact is, that the dawdling habit has made an appreciable
record in the very substance of the child’s brain. During the weeks of
cure new growth has been obliterating the old track, and the track of
a new habit is being formed. To permit any reversion to the old bad
habit is to let go all this gain. To form a good habit is the work of
a few weeks; to guard it is a work of incessant, but by no means
anxious care. One word more,--prompt action on the child’s part should
have the reward of absolute leisure, time in which to do exactly as
she pleases, not granted as a favour, but accruing (without any words)
as a right.
=Habit a Delight in itself.=--Except for this one drawback, the
forming of habits in the children is no laborious task, for the
reward goes hand in hand with the labour; so much so, that it is
like the laying out of a penny with the certainty of the immediate
return of a pound. For a habit is a delight in itself; poor human
nature is conscious of the ease that it is to repeat the doing of
anything without effort; and, therefore, the formation of a habit, the
gradually lessening sense of effort in a given act, is pleasurable.
This is one of the rocks that mothers sometimes split upon: they lose
sight of the fact that a habit, _even_ a good habit, becomes a
real pleasure; and when the child has really formed the habit of doing
a certain thing, his mother imagines that the effort is as great to
him as at first, that it is virtue in him to go on making this effort,
and that he deserves, by way of reward, a little relaxation--she will
let him break through the new habit a few times, and then go on again.
But it is not going on; it is beginning again, and beginning in the
face of obstacles. The ‘little relaxation’ she allowed her child meant
the forming of another contrary habit, which must be overcome before
the child gets back to where he was before.
As a matter of fact, this misguided sympathy on the part of mothers is
the one thing that makes it a laborious undertaking to train a child
in good habits; for it is the nature of the child to take to habits as
kindly as the infant takes to his mother’s milk.
=Tact, Watchfulness, and Persistence.=--For example, and to choose
a habit of no great consequence except as a matter of consideration
for others: the mother wishes her child to acquire the habit of
shutting the door after him when he enters or leaves a room. Tact,
watchfulness, and persistence are the qualities she must cultivate in
herself; and, with these, she will be astonished at the readiness with
which the child picks up the new habit.
=Stages in the Formation of a Habit.=--‘Johnny,’ she says, in a
bright, friendly voice, ‘I want you to remember something with all
your might: never go into or out of a room in which anybody is sitting
without shutting the door.’
‘But if I forget, mother?’
‘I will try to remind you.’
‘But perhaps I shall be in a _great_ hurry.’
‘You must always make time to do that.’
‘But why, mother?’
‘Because it is not polite to the people in the room to make them
uncomfortable.’
‘But if I am going out again that _very_ minute?’
‘Still, shut the door, when you come in; you can open it again to go
out. Do you think you can remember?’
‘I’ll try, mother.’
‘Very well; I shall watch to see how few “forgets” you make.’
For two or three times Johnny remembers; and then, he is off like a
shot and half-way downstairs before his mother has time to call him
back. She does not cry out, ‘Johnny, come back and shut the door!’
because she knows that a summons of that kind is exasperating to big
or little. She goes to the door, and calls pleasantly, ‘Johnny!’
Johnny has forgotten all about the door; he wonders what his mother
wants, and, stirred by curiosity, comes back, to find her seated and
employed as before. She looks up, glances at the door, and says, ‘I
said I should try to remind you.’ ‘Oh, I forgot’ says Johnny, put upon
his honour; and he shuts the door that time, and the next, and the
next.
But the little fellow has really not much power to recollect, and the
mother will have to adopt various little devices to remind him; but
of two things she will be careful--that he never slips off without
shutting the door, and that she never lets the matter be a cause
of friction between herself and the child, taking the line of his
friendly ally to help him against that bad memory of his. By and by,
after, say, twenty shuttings of the door with never an omission,
the habit begins to be formed; Johnny shuts the door as a matter of
course, and his mother watches him with delight come into a room, shut
the door, take something off the table, and go out, again shutting the
door.
=The Dangerous Stage.=--Now that Johnny always shuts the door, his
mother’s joy and triumph begin to be mixed with unreasonable pity.
‘Poor child,’ she says to herself, ‘it is very good of him to take so
much pains about a little thing, just because he is bid!’ She thinks
that, all the time, the child is making an effort for her sake; losing
sight of the fact that the _habit_ has become easy and natural,
that, in fact, Johnny shuts the door without knowing that he does so.
Now comes the critical moment. Some day Johnny is so taken up with
a new delight that the habit, not yet fully formed, loses its hold,
and he is half-way downstairs before he thinks of the door. Then he
does think of it, with a little prick of conscience, strong enough,
not to send him back, but to make him pause a moment to see if his
mother will call him back. She has noticed the omission, and is saying
to herself, ‘Poor little fellow, he has been very good about it this
long time; I’ll let him off this once.’ He, outside, fails to hear
his mother’s call, says, to himself--fatal sentence!--‘Oh, it doesn’t
matter,’ and trots off.
Next time he leaves the door open, but it is not a ‘forget.’ His
mother calls him back in a rather feeble way. His quick ear catches
the weakness of her tone, and, without coming back, he cries, ‘Oh,
mother, I’m in _such_ a hurry,’ and she says no more, but lets
him off. Again he rushes in, leaving the door wide open. ‘Johnny!’--in
a warning voice. ‘I’m going out again just in a minute, mother,’ and
after ten minutes’ rummaging he does go out, and forgets to shut the
door. The mother’s mis-timed easiness has lost for her every foot of
the ground she had gained.
VIII.--INFANT ‘HABITS’
The whole group of habitudes, half physical and half moral, on which
the propriety and comfort of everyday life depend, are received
passively by the child; that is, he does very little to form these
habits himself, but his brain receives impressions from what he sees
about him; and these impressions take form as his own very strongest
and most lasting habits.
=Some Branches of Infant Education.=--Cleanliness, order, neatness,
regularity, punctuality, are all ‘branches’ of _infant_ education.
They should be about the child like the air he breathes, and he will
take them in as unconsciously. It is hardly necessary to say a word
about the necessity for delicate cleanliness in the nursery. The
babies get their share of tubbing, and unlimited washing is done on
their behalf; but, indeed, scrupulous as mothers of the cultured class
are, a great deal rests with the nurses, and it needs much
watchfulness to secure that there shall not be the faintest odour
about the infant or anything belonging to him, and that the nurseries
be kept sweet and thoroughly aired. One great difficulty is, that
there are still some nurses who belong to a class to which an open
window is an abomination; and another is, they do not all know the
meaning of odours: they cannot see ‘a smell,’ and, therefore, it is
not easy to persuade them that a smell is _matter_, microscopic
particles which the child takes into him with every breath he draws.
=A Sensitive Nose.=--By the way, a very important bit of physical
education for a child is to train in him a sensitive nose--nostrils
which sniff out the least ‘stuffiness’ in a room, or the faintest
odour attached to clothes or furniture. The sense of smell appears to
have been given us not only as an avenue of pleasure, but as a sort
of danger-signal to warn us of the presence of noxious matters: yet
many people appear to go through the world without a nose at all;
and the fact tends to show that a quick sense of smell is a matter
of education and habit. The habit is easily formed. Encourage the
children to notice whether the room they enter ‘smells’ quite fresh
when they come in out of the open air, to observe the difference
between the air of the town and the fresher air beyond; and train them
to perceive the faintest trace of pleasant or harmless odours.
=The Baby is Ubiquitous.=--To return to the nursery. It would be a
great thing if the nurse could be impressed with the notion that the
baby is ubiquitous, and that he not only sees and knows everything,
but will keep, for all his life, the mark of all he sees:--
“If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,
I pray ye, tent it;
A chiel’s amang ye takin’ notes,
And, faith, he’ll prent it”:--
‘_prent_ it’ on his own active brain, as a type for his future
habits. Such a notion on the nurse’s part might do something to secure
cleanliness that goes beyond that of clean aprons. One or two little
bits of tidiness that nurses affect are not to be commended on the
score of cleanliness:--the making up of the nursery beds early in the
morning, and the folding up of the children’s garments when they take
them off at night. It is well to stretch a line across the day nursery
at night, and hang the little garments out for an airing, to get rid
of the insensible perspiration with which they have been laden during
the day. For the same reason, the beds and bedclothes should be turned
down to air for a couple of hours before they are made up.
=Personal Cleanliness as an Early Habit.=--The nursery table, if
there be one, should be kept as scrupulously _nice_ as that of
the dining-room. The child who sits down to a crumpled or spotted
tablecloth, or uses a discoloured metal spoon, is degraded--by so
much. The children, too, should be encouraged to nice cleanliness in
their own persons. We have all seen the dainty baby-hand stretched
out to be washed; it has got a smudge, and the child does not like
it. May they be as particular when they are big enough to wash their
own hands! Not that they should be always clean and presentable;
children love to ‘mess about,’ and should have big pinafores for the
purpose. They are all like that little French prince who scorned
his birthday gifts, and entreated to be allowed to make dear little
mud-pies with the boy in the gutter. Let them make their mud-pies
freely; but that over, they should be impatient to remove every trace
of soil, and should do it _themselves_. Young children may be
taught to take care of their finger-nails, and to cleanse the corners
of eyes and ears. As for sitting down to table with unwashed hands and
unbrushed hair, that, of course, no decent child is allowed to do.
Children should be early provided with their own washing materials,
and accustomed to find real pleasure in the bath, and in attending to
themselves. There is no reason why a child of five or six should not
make himself thoroughly clean without all that torture of soap in the
eyes and general pulling about and poking which children hate, and
no wonder. Besides, the child is not getting the _habit_ of the
daily bath until he can take it for himself, and it is important that
this habit should be formed before the reckless era of school-life
begins.
=Modesty and Purity.=--The operations of the bath afford the mother
opportunities to give necessary teaching and training in habits of
decency, and a sense of modesty. To let her young child live and grow
in Eden-like simplicity is, perhaps, the most tempting and natural
course to the mother. But alas! we do not live in the Garden, and it
may be well that the child should be trained from the first to the
conditions under which he is to live. To the youngest child, as to
our first parents, there is that which is forbidden. In the age of
unquestioning obedience, let him know that not all of his body does
Almighty God allow him to speak of, think of, display, handle, except
for purposes of cleanliness. This will be the easier to the mother if
she speak of heart, lungs, etc., which, also, we are not allowed to
look at or handle, but which have been so enclosed in walls of flesh
and bone that we cannot get at them. That which is left open to us is
so left, like that tree in the Garden of Eden, as a test of obedience;
and in the one case, as in the other, disobedience is attended with
certain loss and ruin.
=The Habit of Obedience and the Sense of Honour.=--The sense of
prohibition, of _sin_ in disobedience, will be a wonderful
safeguard against knowledge of evil to the child brought up in habits
of obedience; and still more effective will be the sense of honour,
of a charge to keep--the motive of the apostolic injunctions on this
subject. Let the mother renew this charge with earnestness on the eve,
say, of each birthday, giving the child to feel that by obedience in
this matter he may glorify God _with his body_; let her keep
watch against every approach of evil; and let her pray daily that each
one of her children may be kept in purity for that day. To ignore the
_possibilities_ of evil in this kind is to expose the child to
frightful risks. At the same time, be it remembered that words which
were meant to hinder may themselves be the cause of evil, and that a
life full of healthy interests and activities is amongst the surest
preventives of secret vice.
=Order Essential.=--What has been said about cleanliness applies as
much to order--order in the nursery, and orderly habits in the nurse.
One thing under this head: the nursery should not be made the hospital
for the disabled or worn-out furniture of the house; cracked cups,
chipped plates, jugs and teapots with fractured spouts, should be
banished. The children should be brought up to think that when once
an article is made unsightly by soil or fracture it is spoiled, and
must be replaced; and this rule will prove really economical, for
when children and servants find that things no longer ‘do,’ after
some careless injury, they learn to be careful. But, in any case, it
is a real detriment to the children to grow up using imperfect and
unsightly makeshifts.
The pleasure grown-up people take in waiting on children is really
a fruitful source of mischief;--for instance, in this matter of
orderly habits. Who does not know the litter the children leave to be
cleared up after them a dozen times a day, in the nursery, garden,
drawing-room, wherever their restless little feet carry them? We are a
bit sentimental about scattered toys and faded nosegays, and all the
tokens of the children’s presence; but the fact is, that the lawless
habit of scattering should not be allowed to grow upon children.
Everybody condemns the mother of a family whose drawers are chaotic,
whose possessions are flung about heedlessly; but at least some of
the blame should be carried back to _her_ mother. It is not as
a woman that she has picked up a miserable habit which destroys the
comfort, if not the happiness, of her home; the habit of disorder was
allowed to grow upon her as a child, and her share of the blame is,
that she has failed to cure herself.
=The Child of Two should put away his Playthings.=--The child of two
should be taught to get and to replace his playthings. Begin early.
Let it be a pleasure to him, part of his play, to open his cupboard,
and put back the doll or the horse each in its own place. Let him
_always_ put away his things as a matter of course, and it is
surprising how soon a habit of order is formed, which will make it
pleasant to the child to put away his toys, and irritating to him to
see things in the wrong place. If parents would only see the morality
of order, that order in the nursery becomes scrupulousness in after
life, and that the training necessary to form the habit is no more,
comparatively, than the occasional winding of a clock, which ticks
away then of its own accord and without trouble to itself, more pains
would be taken to cultivate this important habit.
=Neatness Akin to Order.=--Neatness is akin to order, but is not
quite the same thing: it implies not only ‘a place for everything,
and everything in its place,’ but everything in a suitable place,
so as to produce a good effect; in fact, _taste_ comes into
play. The little girl must not only put her flowers in water, but
arrange them prettily, and must not be put off with some rude kitchen
mug or jug for them, or some hideous pink vase, but must have jar
or vase graceful in form and harmonious in hue, though it be but
a cheap trifle. In the same way, everything in the nursery should
be ‘neat’--that is, pleasing and suitable; and children should be
encouraged to make neat and effective arrangements of their own little
properties. Nothing vulgar in the way of print, picture-book, or toy
should be admitted--nothing to vitiate a child’s taste or introduce
a strain of commonness into his nature. On the other hand, it would
be hard to estimate the refining, elevating influence of one or two
well-chosen works of art, in however cheap a reproduction.
=Regularity.=--The importance of _Regularity_ in infant education
is beginning to be pretty generally acknowledged. The young mother
knows that she must put her baby to bed at a proper time, regardless
of his cries, even if she leave him to cry two or three times, in
order that, for the rest of his baby life, he may put himself sweetly
to sleep in the dark without protest. But a good deal of nonsense is
talked about the reason of the child’s cries: he is supposed to want
his mother, or his nurse, or his bottle, or the light, and to be ‘a
knowing little fellow,’ according to his nurse, quite up to the fact
that if he cries for these things he will get them.
=Habits of Time and Place.=--The fact is, the child has already formed
a habit of wakefulness or of feeding at improper times, and he is as
uneasy at his habits being broken in upon as the cat is at a change
of habitation; when he submits happily to the new regulation, it is
because the new habit is formed, and is, in its turn, the source of
satisfaction. According to Dr Carpenter, “_Regularity_ should
begin even with infant life, as to times of feeding, repose, etc.
The _bodily_ habit thus formed greatly helps to shape the
_mental_ habit at a later period. On the other hand, nothing
tends more to generate a habit of self-indulgence than to feed a
child, or to allow it to remain out of bed, at unseasonable times,
merely because it cries. It is wonderful how soon the actions of a
young infant (like those of a young dog or horse) come into harmony
with systematic ‘training’ judiciously exercised.” The habit of
regularity is as attractive to older children as to the infant. The
days when the usual programme falls through are, we know, the days
when the children are apt to be naughty.
IX.--PHYSICAL EXERCISES
=Importance of Daily.=--The subject of the natural training of eye and
muscles was taken up pretty fully in treating of ‘Out-of-door Life.’
I will only add, that to give the child pleasure in light and easy
motion--the sort of delight in the management of his own body that a
good rider finds in managing his horse--dancing, drill, calisthenics,
some sort of judicious physical exercise, should make part of every
day’s routine. Swedish drill is especially valuable, and many of the
exercises are quite suitable for the nursery. Certain moral qualities
come into play in alert movements, eye-to-eye attention, prompt and
intelligent replies; but it often happens that good children fail in
these points for want of physical training.
=Drill of Good Manners.=--Just let them go through the drill of good
manners: let them rehearse little scenes in play,--Mary, the lady
asking the way to the market; Harry, the boy who directs her, and so
on. Let them go through a position drill--eyes right, hands still,
heads up. They will invent a hundred situations, and the behaviour
proper to each, and will treasure hints thrown in for their guidance;
but this sort of drill should be attempted while children are young,
before the tyranny of _mauvaise honte_ sets in. Encourage them to
admire and take pride in light springing movements, and to eschew a
heavy gait and clownish action of the limbs.
=Training of the Ear and Voice.=--The training of the ear and
voice is an exceedingly important part of physical culture. Drill
the children in pure vowel sounds, in the enunciation of final
consonants; do not let them speak of ‘walkin’’ and ‘talkin’,’ of a
‘fi-ine da-ay,’ ‘ni-ice boy-oys.’ Drill them in pronouncing difficult
words--‘imperturbability,’ ‘ipecacuanha,’ ‘Antananarivo,’--with sharp
precision after a single hearing; in producing the several sounds of
each vowel; and the sounds of the consonants _without_ attendant
vowels. French, taught orally, is exceedingly valuable as affording
training for both ear and voice.
=The Habit of Music.=--As for a musical training, it would be hard to
say how much that passes for inherited musical taste and ability is
the result of the constant hearing and producing of musical sounds,
the _habit_ of music, that the child of musical people grows
up with. Mr Hullah maintained that the art of singing is entirely
a trained habit--that every child may be, and should be, trained
to sing. Of course, _transmitted_ habit must be taken into
account. It is a pity that the musical training most children get
is of a random character; that they are not trained, for instance,
by carefully graduated ear and voice exercises, to produce and
distinguish musical tones and intervals.
=Let Children Alone.=--In conclusion, let me say that the education
of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to _let
her children alone_, not teasing them with perpetual commands and
directions--a running fire of _Do_ and _Don’t_; but letting
them go their own way and _grow_, having first secured that they
will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose. The gardener, it
is true, ‘digs about and dungs,’ prunes and trains, his peach tree;
but that occupies a small fraction of the tree’s life: all the rest
of the time the sweet airs and sunshine, the rains and dews, play
about it and breathe upon it, get into its substance, and the result
is--peaches. But let the gardener neglect _his_ part, and the
peaches will be no better than sloes.