“How did you like that?”
“Not at all,” was the embarrassed answer.
“Well, then, do you think the dog liked it? Now go out to the yard.”
“I sent him out,” Witte says, “not only as a punishment, but because I
saw that some of my guests were about to open their lips to take his
part and to blame me—in his presence!—for my treatment of him. But one
of them, speaking suddenly, said:
“‘God bless you, dear friend. If Karl, as I believe he is certain to
do, shall grow to be a good man, he will thank you heartily for this
lesson. I wish to Heaven we thus and always handled our children. Then
they would be sure to learn to treat animals kindly, and by so much the
more to treat their fellow-men kindly!”
And Witte adds, dryly:
“After this, none of those present thought it well to say anything in
criticism of me.”
He had, in fact, taken precisely the course best calculated to impress
on Karl the vitally important principle of kindness to all living
creatures. For he had brought this principle home to him in a way the
child’s mind could readily grasp, and without unnecessary harshness and
“nagging,” which, after all, only arouse those contrariant ideas that
it should be the great aim of education to suppress. And it was thus
that Witte and his wife always acted in the upbringing of their boy
through the critical formative period of early childhood. The moment
any undesirable characteristic made its appearance they hastened
to awaken in him a sense of its extreme undesirability by words and
conduct that appealed forcefully both to his understanding and to his
emotions.
Particularly did they appeal—and here is a point deserving of special
emphasis—to his sense of filial love. That they were able to make
their appeal unfailingly successful, that the child always found in
it a compelling motive for good behaviour, was due to the fact that
their whole attitude toward him made him realise that he was an object
of devoted, though not over-indulgent, love on their part. Never
rebuked without a sufficient cause, and always more in sorrow than
in anger; given a free hand in all things except those injurious or
detrimental to him; made a companion and a playmate by both parents—he
soon perceived, as any child would, that they had nothing more warmly
at heart than his best interests and his happiness. Loved as he was,
he gave out abundant love in return, and the great ambition of his
childhood became a passionate desire to please his father and mother.
Hence it was that Witte, in carrying out his policy of early
intellectual training, found no more potent spur to incite his boy to
study the subjects given him than the simple statement, “You know, dear
Karl, you must learn all you can, so that you will be able to care for
your mother and me when we are old and feeble.” Hence, too, the child
acquired habits of obedience, self-control, and truthfulness, largely
because of his anxiety not to bring pain to his parents. They, however,
it is to be noted, were careful to discipline him firmly if he did
commit a fault, but always in a way that caused him to appreciate the
reasonableness of the punishment inflicted on him.
Such was the manner of Karl Witte’s education up to the age of nine. By
that time he had learned so much, and was so well trained in the use
of his mental powers, that his father decided to send him to college.
At nine and a half, to the amazement of all Germany, he entered the
University of Leipzig. There, as at the universities of Göttingen,
Giessen, and Heidelberg, where he also prosecuted his studies, his
career was brilliant in the extreme. No subject—and he applied himself
to many subjects—seemed beyond his powers. In 1814, before he had
passed his fourteenth birthday, he was granted the degree of Ph.D. for
a thesis on the “Conchoid of Nicomedes,” a curve of the fourth degree.
Two years later he was made a Doctor of Laws, and appointed to the
teaching staff of the University of Berlin.
Before beginning to teach, however, it was thought best for him to
spend some time in foreign travel, which he was enabled to do, thanks
to the generosity of no less a personage than the King of Prussia, who
had been following his university career with lively interest. Abroad,
therefore, Karl Witte went, chiefly to study law, the teaching of which
he had definitely selected as his profession. But toward the close of
1818 an incident occurred which, while it did not turn him from law,
opened up to him another field of intellectual activity, and the one
in which he ultimately won his greatest fame.
While sojourning in Florence he chanced to make the acquaintance of
a talented woman who, discussing with him the masters of Italian
literature, half in jest and half in earnest warned him not to attempt
to read Dante, whom he could never hope to “understand.” Naturally
this roused his curiosity, and he promptly bought an elaborate edition
of the “Divine Comedy.” Reading this through, he then read what the
commentators had to say about it, and was shocked at what he considered
the inadequacy and positive error of their views. “Some day,” said
he to himself, “I will certainly make an effort to promote a better
appreciation of Dante.” This resolution he carried into effect five
years later by the publication, in Germany, of one of the most
important literary essays of the nineteenth century. It was entitled
“On Misunderstanding Dante,” and concerning it a modern authority on
the study of Dante, Philip H. Wicksteed, declares:
“If the history of the revival of interest in Dante which has
characterised this century shall ever be written, Karl Witte will be
the chief hero of the tale. He was little more than a boy when, in
1823, he entered the lists against existing Dante scholars, all and
sundry, demonstrated that there was not one of them that knew his
trade, and announced his readiness to teach it to them. The amazing
thing is that he fully accomplished his vaunt. His essay exercised
a growing influence in Germany, and then in Europe; and after
five-and-forty years of indefatigable and fruitful toil he was able
to look back upon his youthful attempt as containing the germ of all
his subsequent work on Dante. But now, instead of the audacious young
heretic and revolutionist, he was the acknowledged master of the most
prominent Dante scholars in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, and
America.”
In fact, from the time of the publication of this preliminary
paper, almost to the time of his death, Dante essays, translations,
commentaries, came from the pen of Karl Witte, to delight an
ever-widening circle of Dante scholars, and incidentally to promote
the study of Italian history. To understand Dante, Witte iterated and
reiterated, it is absolutely necessary to have a knowledge of mediæval
Italy. Especially must one study the religious pre-occupation of the
age, as seen in the rise of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, the
Thomist reconstitution of theology and the contemporary consolidation
of the hierarchy, and the attitude of the period toward the Albigenses
and other heretics. This knowledge one must gain if he would fully
appreciate the true significance of the “Divine Comedy” as the
portrayal of man given over to sin and prevented by his lusts from
recovering the path to virtue, till the Christian religion teaches him,
by the light of understanding, to recognise sin and free himself from
it, and then offers to his transported vision the divine revelation of
the secret and bliss of Heaven.
Yet all the while the propagation of his views on Dante and the
fostering of a love for Dante were but an avocation with Karl Witte.
His vocation, his life-work, was the teaching of the principles of law,
both in the class-room and by the pen. It was in 1821, soon after his
return from Italy, that he was established as lecturer on jurisprudence
at the University of Breslau, being appointed to a full professorship
two years later, and transferred to Halle in 1834. There he passed the
remainder of his long and distinguished life, which did not terminate
until March 6, 1883, when he passed away sincerely mourned as “a devout
Christian and elder of the church, a scholar overwhelmed with honours
and distinctions, a tender husband and father.”
Thus the “forcing” process to which his father had subjected him did
not in the least hurt Karl Witte. It is one which any conscientious
and intelligent parent may make use of for his own children if he so
desires. And, to my way of thinking, children reared in this way will
have a far better chance for success and happiness in after years than
would otherwise be theirs.
V
THE PROBLEM OF LAZINESS
From what has already been said, it is evident that there are at
least three fundamental principles to be observed by all parents who
would give their children a good start in life. Care must be taken
to set the little ones a really good parental example; they must be
surrounded from the dawn of consciousness by a favourable environment;
and the effort should be made by direct instruction to develop in them
habits of right thinking and acting before wrong habits have time to
get formed. To these three principles a fourth must now be added: the
exercise of constant vigilance to detect and correct any physical
disabilities, no matter how trivial they may seem to be.
As was noted when discussing the case of the boy who “goes wrong,”
even comparatively slight physical defects, by causing neural stress,
may contribute directly to the making of the juvenile delinquent. So,
too, mental development may be hampered by unfavourable conditions
of bodily health. This, of course, has long been recognised in a
general way. But in essential details it still is a fact far too
little appreciated by the majority of parents. Nay, it is ignored or
misunderstood even by some scientific students of the nature of man, as
is shown, for example, by the varying views held to-day regarding that
widespread human frailty, laziness.
Only a short time ago, looking through some scientific works bearing
on a complicated educational problem, I was greatly struck by two
pronouncements concerning laziness. On the one hand I found an eminent
physiologist declaring unreservedly, “The love of work and activity is
an acquired characteristic rather than a natural one; for the human
tendency is toward the line of least effort.” And opposed to this
another authority asserted with equal emphasis, “There never was a
child born into this world who was born into it lazy.”
To reconcile these statements is a manifest impossibility. Yet it is
certain that each of them finds in facts of everyday observation a
strong body of evidence to support it. The average child of tender
years, as every parent knows, is supremely active and energetic. He
is always in motion, always busying himself about something, his
mind alert and inquiring, his hands ceaselessly occupied in testing,
exploring, putting together, and taking to pieces. Left to himself,
he often will display an amazing tenacity of purpose and vigour of
performance.
Of one child, less than a year old, a close observer has recorded, “He
would over and over again seem to be trying to solve the problem of the
hinge to his nursery door, patiently and with riveted attention opening
and shutting the door. Day after day saw him at his self-appointed
task.” Another, fourteen months old, while playing with a tin can,
was seen to put the cover on and off “not less than seventy-nine
times without stopping for a moment.” The incessant questioning with
which children bombard their parents is another impressive indication
of their exuberant, irrepressible activity and energy. But, for that
matter, the whole life of the average child goes to corroborate the
dictum that the people of this world come into it free from the taint
of laziness.
When, however, we look at the same child grown to manhood, or even a
few years removed from early youth, more often than not his behaviour
seems to bear out the contrary view that man is naturally lazy and
acquires love of work, if at all, only under strong compulsion. “To get
results from my boys, to induce them to apply themselves to their books
and their studies,” many a despairing school-teacher has lamented, “I
have to be forever watching and driving them.” In college, office,
factory, workshop, and store, one hears the same complaint. There is
perpetual waste of time, dawdling, loitering, gossiping—a seeming
passion for the ways of slothful ease and aversion from sustained
endeavour. To a large extent, too, the history even of those who have
won distinction as leaders of thought and action seemingly justifies
the doctrine that mankind is naturally prone to idleness rather than
to productive activity, and that any tendency in the latter direction
is invariably a characteristic acquired in the course of individual
development.
Thus Charles Darwin, world-famous for his splendid contributions to the
advance of science, was so lazy in boyhood that his father predicted
he would turn out a ne’er-do-well and a disgrace to the family. His
great contemporary, Sir Charles Lyell, similarly had as a boy a
profound dislike for work of any sort. Heinrich Heine, on his own
confession, idled away his time in school, and was “horribly bored”
by the instruction given him at Göttingen. According to an American
psychologist, Edgar James Swift, who has made an extensive study of
the boyhood of great men, Wordsworth up to the age of seventeen was so
lazy as to be “wholly incapable of continued application to prescribed
work.” Of Patrick Henry it is recorded by an early biographer that
in boyhood “he was too idle to gain any solid advantage from the
opportunities which were thrown in his way.” And, after his schooling
was done, indolence caused him to fail dismally in several business
ventures before he took up the study of law.
When James Russell Lowell was a boy his relatives were greatly
distressed by his laziness, and he was suspended by the authorities
of Harvard University “on account of continual neglect of his college
duties.” A boyhood friend who had unusual facilities for observation
is credited with having repeatedly declared that “there never was so
idle a dog as young Humphry,” afterward Sir Humphry Davy of scientific
renown. “My master,” Samuel Johnson once remarked, in speaking of his
school-boy days, “whipped me very hard. Without that, sir, I should
have done nothing.” Balzac, who wrote so many novels, yet did not let
one appear until it had undergone repeated revision, confessed that not
only in boyhood but throughout the years of his literary labours he
was tormented by longings for an existence of pleasure-seeking leisure.
Through the lips of his famous character, Raphael de Valentin, here is
what he says of himself:
“Since the age of reason until the day when I had finished my task,
I observed, read, wrote without ceasing, and my life was like a long
imposition; an effeminate lover of oriental indolence, enamoured of
my dreams, sensual, I have always worked, refusing to allow myself
to taste the joys of Parisian life; gourmand, I have been temperate;
enjoying movement and sea voyages, longing to visit other countries,
still finding pleasure, like a child, in making ducks and drakes on the
water, I remained constantly seated, pen in hand.”
Taking into consideration facts like these, the evidence would
certainly seem to be in favour of the view that, in yielding to a
desire for idleness, men are, after all, only following the dictate of
Nature. But, recalling the intense activity, the abounding energy of
childhood, recalling also the demonstrable truth that in most cases
even the laziest of school-boys has had a past characterised by the
reverse of laziness, just as he may have, like Darwin, Lyell, and the
rest, a future of marvellous accomplishment, the mind must once more
incline to the opposite belief.
It may be, and, as will be shown, it undoubtedly is, somewhat of an
exaggeration to say that there never has been a congenitally lazy
man. But to say this is far nearer the truth than to regard laziness
as something rooted in the constitution of our being, and love of
activity as merely an acquired characteristic. On the contrary, the
sharp contrast between the activity and energy of the average child
and the idling propensities of the average man, points unmistakably to
the development of laziness as a parasitic growth interfering with the
normal processes and tendencies of nature. Laziness, in other words,
must be looked upon as essentially a pathological condition.
Instead, therefore, of condemning the lazy man, as the moralists
would, it is the part of wisdom to view him as a victim of disease and
as standing in need of careful treatment. Nature intended him to be
vigorous, forceful, a being of achievement; circumstances have made
him listless, inert, responsive but in feeble measure to the spur of
honour, ambition, pride, love, or necessity. Sometimes, to be sure,
he is contented with his laziness, and would almost resent an attempt
to rescue him from it; more frequently he writhes in secret over a
defect which he realises exposes him to the contempt and ridicule of
his more virile fellow-men, and renders his life an empty, profitless
existence. As one unhappy victim confessed in a moment of extraordinary
self-revelation:
“I begin, but do not finish. When I conceive a work, a feverish
impatience seizes me to reach the desired aim; I should like to attain
it at once. But to accomplish something, patient and continuous efforts
are required. I never accomplish anything.... One dull day, in one
of the suburbs, I saw a large piece of waste land, more covered
with fragments of earthenware than with grass. Three or four houses
had been commenced, charming little dwellings of red brick and white
stone; the walls had been there for two or three years, but the floors
and ceilings were lacking, the roofs had never been tiled, and one
could see across the ever wide-open windows. My mind is in a similar
condition—a rough plain with several pretty houses, the roofs of which
will never be finished.” (_The Fortnightly Review_, vol. lxix, p. 763.)
What, then, is the cause of laziness? How should one proceed in the
attempt to cure it? Still more important in this complex and severely
competitive age, with its incessant demand for vigour and effectiveness
of performance, what are the preventive measures that may be taken in
the interest alike of the individual and society?
Only a few years ago it would have been impossible to answer these
questions in any but the vaguest and most general way. It might
have been said—indeed, it was said—that laziness is essentially an
infirmity of the will. No statement could be more correct, but also
none could be more futile in the absence of any clear appreciation of
the factors determining the weakness or strength of one’s will-power.
For, as somebody has truly said, the will is not an isolated entity,
absolutely independent of, and superior to, the organism through
which it operates. Having a controlling force, it still is, to a
large extent, itself controlled by material as well as by psychical
circumstances, by bodily states and by the impressions the mind absorbs
from the environment. Consequently the solution of the problem of
laziness depends at bottom on the ascertainment of the factors hurtful
to efficient willing.
This task quite recently has been essayed with remarkable success, and,
especially by a little group of French investigators, with immediate
reference to the problem presented by the lazy man. Laziness in all
its phases has been studied with the resourcefulness and painstaking
precision characteristic of the new school of medical psychologists,
to whom we are already so heavily indebted for a better understanding
of the mind of man both in its normal and its abnormal aspects. And
with respect to laziness they have likewise made some interesting and
important discoveries.
What, in particular, they have found is that it is usually associated
with a peculiarly debilitated condition of the nervous system—an
“asthenia” marked by a slow heart-beat, low arterial pressure, and
poor circulation. The consequence of this is, to quote Théodule
Ribot, one of the leaders in the scientific study of laziness, that
“the brain shows not so much an indisposition as a real incapacity
for concentrating attention, and soon, owing to the fact that its
nourishment is at the vanishing-point, becomes exhausted.” A whole
series of idlers, tested scientifically, were shown to be suffering
from this asthenic condition, which led them instinctively to husband
their feeble resources by the simple expedient of exerting themselves
no more than was absolutely necessary. Yet not a few of them were to
all appearance healthy enough, and, until the medical examination had
been made, it was difficult to credit their well-grounded complaint
that they really felt “too tired to work,” and at best could do so
“only by fits and starts.”
This is not to say that they were all of them “born tired.”
Congenitally weak many of them may have been; but the more the
investigators familiarised themselves with the asthenia of the lazy,
the more they found reason for the belief that, as a rule, it was an
acquired and functional rather than an inborn and organic weakness,
although often initiated by local troubles organic in nature. Thus,
studying laziness in children attending school, it was discovered
that quite frequently their inertia is connected with the presence of
adenoid, or abnormal tissue, growths, in the cavity back of the nose.
These growths, by making it extremely hard for the child to breathe
properly, deplete his vitality so that he remains undersized and is
quickly fatigued by intellectual or muscular effort. The natural
consequence is that he becomes more or less of an idler, bringing upon
himself the reproaches and punishments of parents and teachers. What
he actually needs is not scoldings or whippings but a slight surgical
operation.
Often a surprising development of both mental and physical power
follows the removal of the adenoids. In one case, reported by Professor
Swift, a girl of fourteen grew three inches taller within six months
after an operation for adenoids, and at the same time showed an
improvement in her school-work that contrasted strikingly with the
apathy and dulness that had preceded it. Another, three years younger,
grew six inches in about four months, and from being a sad idler was
transformed into an unexpectedly attractive and bright pupil. A boy
of twelve, backward both mentally and physically, likewise lost his
dulness and laziness within an astonishingly short time after the
impediment to his breathing had been removed.
Dental defects also contribute materially to the development of
laziness and mental retardation. This has been repeatedly demonstrated
in individual cases, and at least one psychologist—Professor J. E.
Wallace Wallin, of St. Louis—has demonstrated it in the case of a group
of children.
These children, twenty-seven in number, were pupils in a Cleveland
public school; they were afflicted with tooth-decay to a varying
extent, and they were mentally backward, being from one to four years
retarded in their school-work. At Professor Wallin’s direction their
teeth and gums were treated, they were taught to use a tooth-brush
properly, and to chew their food thoroughly. Before the dental
treatment began they were twice given five psychological tests, to
ascertain their memory-power, attention-power, etc.; the same tests
were twice given to them while the treatment was under way; and,
six months after its termination, or just before the close of the
school-year 1910-1911, the tests were again given twice.