drops things continually, the child frequently: the adult will hold an
object even while the mind is otherwise engaged, the habit of the
flexo-motor nerves being well established. Enterprising experiment is
not only natural to childhood, but a positive virtue. That is the
quality which leads the world onward, and the lack of it is a Chinese
wall against progress. One enormous field of what we call naughtiness
in our little ones lies in offences against things.
First and foremost, clothes. Wetting, soiling, and tearing
clothes,--what a sea of tears have been shed, what wails and sobs,
what heavy and useless punishments inflicted, because of injured
clothing! Yet almost every accident to clothing comes from the
interaction of two facts: first, the perfectly natural clumsiness and
carelessness of childhood; and, second, our interminable folly in
dressing a child in unchildish garments, and placing him in unchildish
conditions. There is no naughtiness involved except in the parent, who
shows a stupidity abnormal to her age. Children are frequently
reproached for wearing out their shoes. What does the intelligent
parent expect? Is the child to sit in a chair, lie down, or ride the
bicycle continually? If the child is seen to cut his shoes with knives
or grind them on a grindstone, that may be discouraged as malicious
mischief; but the inevitable stubbing and scuffing of the eager,
restless, ungoverned little feet should have been foreseen and allowed
for. We do strive to buy the heaviest possible mass of iron-shod
leather for our boys, and then we scold them for being noisy.
To surround a growing creature with artificial difficulties, to fail
to understand or allow for the natural difficulties of his age, and
then to punish with arbitrary retribution the behaviour which is sure
to appear, this is not the kind of discipline which makes wise,
strong, self-governing citizens.
V.
TEACHABLE ETHICS.
Our general knowledge of ethics is small and unreliable, and our
practice in ethics even smaller and more unreliable. The good
intentions of mankind are prominent; but our ideas of right behaviour
are so contradictory and uncertain, our execution of such ideas as we
hold so partial and irregular, that human behaviour continues to be
most unsatisfactory. This condition we used to cheerfully attribute to
the infirmity of human nature, taking ignominious consolation from the
thought of our vicious tendencies and hopeless weakness.
The broad light of evolutionary study has removed this contemptible
excuse. We now know human nature to be quite as good as the rest of
nature, wherein everything is good after its kind; and that,
furthermore, our human kind has made great improvement in conduct so
far, and is capable of making a great deal more. We are not weak: we
are strong. We are not wicked: we earnestly desire to be good. But we
are still very ignorant of the science of ethics, and most inept in
its practice.
We learn mathematics, and apply our knowledge with marvellous results.
We learn physics, and use what we know therein to work miracles in the
material world. Ethics is as plain a science as physics, and as easy
of application. Ethics is the physics of social relation. The cause of
our slow growth in ethics is this:--
The prominent importance of right action and constant need of some
general standard to appeal to, strongly impress the human mind in its
very earliest stage of development. Incapable as yet of scientific
methods of study, ignorant, supremely credulous and timid,
conservative and superstitious to a degree, primitive man promptly
made "a religion" of his scant observations and deductions in ethics,
and forbade all further study and experiment. Where other sciences
have their recognised room for progress, a slowly accumulating and
often changing knowledge behind, and a free field of uncertainty in
front, ethics was promptly walled in with the absolute and the
super-natural. The few lines of action then recognised as "moral" or
"immoral" were defined in the most conclusive manner, and no room left
for later study. It is most interesting to note the efforts of
conscientious men in later ages to make an intelligible, consistent
scheme of ethics out of these essentially incorrect early attempts. By
these efforts a religion grew from a simple group of dogmas and rites
to the complex ramifications of many commentators; and the occasional
vigorous and progressive brain that saw more light has always had to
suffer and struggle long to introduce new truth. We have forbidden,
under awful penalties, all open-minded study in these lines; and this
especially hindering mental attitude has kept the most general and
simple of the sciences in a very backward condition, so that we go
through school and college with no real enlightenment on the subject.
Thus a young man, quite proficient in languages, physics, and the
higher mathematics, will be shamefully deficient in even the lowest
ethics (right behaviour in regard to himself), and show no
acquaintance whatever with the higher branches of the subject. We err
very commonly in right treatment of ourselves, more commonly in
treatment of one another; and our confusion of idea and behaviour
increases with the square of the distance, our behaviour to other
nations or other kinds of animals being lowest of all. We have a
common scheme of behaviour, coming from various influences and
conditions, which we cannot ourselves account for by any ethical
rules; and this every-day working ethics of ours shows how social
evolution unconsciously developes needed conduct, even where our
conscious intelligence fails to recognise or recommend such conduct as
ethical. Thus we have developed many stalwart and timely virtues in
spite of rather than because of religious approval, and many serious
vices flourish without religious opposition.
A conspicuous instance of this is in the pious contentment of a
wealthy church corporation, the income of which is derived from
tenement houses which are hotbeds of evil; and in the often observed
conduct of an irreligious man, who practises the commonplace
necessary virtues of daily business life. But this power of social
evolution developes the immediate virtues essential to close personal
intercourse more quickly than the higher range of virtue, needed in
national and international affairs. Thus we often see "a good family
man," friend, and perhaps even an honest business dealer, shamefully
negligent or corrupt in political duty.
It would seem that the same brains which have brought us forward to
such enormous knowledge in other lines might have made more progress
in this. Some special cause must have operated, and be still
operating, to prevent a normal growth in this deeply important field.
Much might be said here of the influence of religious custom; but the
still closer and more invariable cause lies not in the church, but in
the home.
Where in social relation our necessary enlargement and progress have
forced upon us nobler characteristics, in the domestic relation small
change has been made. The privacy and conservatism of the family
group have made it a nursing ground of rudimentary survivals, long
since outgrown in more open fields; and the ethical code of the family
is patently behind that of the society in which it is located. The
primitive instincts, affections, and passions are there; but justice,
liberty, courtesy, and such later social sentiments are very weak.
New truth is seen by new brains. As the organ we think with grows from
age to age, we are able to think farther and deeper; but, if the
growing brain is especially injured in any one department in early
youth, it will not grow as fast in that one line. As a general
rule,--a rule with rare exceptions,--we do thus injure the baby brain
in the line of ethical thought and action. In other sciences we teach
what we know, when we teach at all, and practise fairly; but, in
teaching a child ethics, we do not give even what we have of
knowledge, and our practice with him and the practice we demand from
him are not at all in accordance with our true views.
In glaring instance is the habit of lying to children. A woman who
would not lie to a grown friend will lie freely to her own child. A
man who would not be unjust to his brother or a stranger will be
unjust to his little son. The common courtesy given any adult is not
given to the child. That delicate consideration for another's
feelings, which is part of our common practice among friends, is
lacking in our dealings with children. From the treatment they
receive, children cannot learn any rational and consistent scheme of
ethics. Their healthy little brains make early inference from the
conduct of their elders, and incite behaviour on the same plan; but
they speedily find that these are poor rules, for they do not work
both ways. The conduct we seek to enforce from them does not accord
with our conduct, nor form any consistent whole by itself. It is not
based on any simple group of principles which a child can understand,
but rests very largely on the personal equation and the minor
variations of circumstance.
Take lying again as an instance. 1. We lie to the child. He discovers
it. No evil is apparently resultant. 2. He accuses us of it, and we
punish him for impertinence. 3. He lies to us, and meets severe
penalties. 4. We accuse him of it, rightly or wrongly, and are not
punished for impertinence. 5. He observes us lie to the visitor in the
way of politeness with no evil result. 6. He lies to the visitor less
skilfully, and is again made to suffer. 7. He lies to his more
ignorant juniors, and nothing happens. 8. Meanwhile, if he receives
any definite ethical instruction on the subject, he is probably told
that God hates a liar, that to lie is a sin!
The elastic human brain can and does accommodate itself to this
confusion, and grows up to complacently repeat the whole performance
without any consciousness of inconsistency; but progress in ethics is
hardly to be looked for under such conditions. It is pathetic to see
this waste of power in each generation. We are born with the gentler
and kinder impulses bred by long social interrelation. We have ever
broader and subtler brains; but our good impulses are checked,
twisted, tangled, weighed down with many artificial restrictions, and
our restless questionings and suggestions are snubbed or neglected. A
child is temptingly open to instruction in ethics. His primitive
mental attitude recognises the importance of the main principles as
strongly as the early savage did. His simple and guarded life makes it
easy for us to supply profuse and continuous illustrations of the
working of these principles; and his strong, keen feelings enable us
to impress with lasting power the relative rightness and wrongness of
different lines of action.
Yet this beautiful opportunity is not only neglected, but the fresh
mind and its eager powers are blurred, confused, discouraged, by our
senseless treatment. Our lack of knowledge does not excuse it. Our
lingering religious restriction does not excuse it. We know something
of ethics, and practise something, but treat the child as if he was a
lower instead of a higher being. Surely, we can reduce our ethical
knowledge into some simple and teachable shape, and take the same
pains to teach this noblest, this most indispensable of sciences that
we take to teach music or dancing. Physics is the science of
molecular relation,--how things work in relation to other things.
Ethics is the science of social relation,--how people work in relation
to other people. To the individual there is no ethics but of
self-development and reproduction. The lonely animal's behaviour goes
no farther. But gregarious animals have to relate their behaviour to
one another,--a more complex problem; and in our intricate co-relation
there is so wide a field of inter-relative behaviour that its working
principles and laws form a science.
However complex our ultimate acts, they are open to classification,
and resolve themselves into certain general principles which long
since were recognised and named. Liberty, justice, love,--we all know
these and others, and can promptly square a given act by some familiar
principle. The sense of justice developes very early, and may be used
as a basis for a large range of conduct. "To play fair" can be early
taught. "That isn't fair!" is one of a child's earliest perceptions.
"When I want to go somewhere, you say I'm too little; and, when I
cry, you say I'm too big! It isn't fair!" protests the child.
In training a child in the perception and practice of justice, we
should always remember that the standard must suit the child's mind,
not ours. What to our longer, wider sweep of vision seems quite just,
to him may seem bitterly unjust; and, if we punish a child in a way
that seems to him unjust, he is unjustly punished. So the instructor
in ethics must have an extended knowledge of the child's point of
view,--that of children in general and of the child being instructed
in particular, and the illustrations measured accordingly. It ought to
be unnecessary to remark that no more passion should be used in
teaching ethics than in teaching arithmetic. The child will make
mistakes, of course. We know that beforehand, and can largely provide
for them. It is for us to arrange his successive problems so that they
are not too rapid or too difficult, and to be no more impatient or
displeased at a natural slip in this line of development than in any
other.
Unhappily, it is just here that we almost always err. The child's
slowly accumulating perceptions and increasing accuracy of expression
are not only confused by our erroneous teaching, but greatly shocked
and jarred by our manner, our evident excitement in cases of conduct
which we call "matters of right and wrong." All conduct is right or
wrong. A difference in praise or blame belongs to relative excellence
of intention or of performance; but the formation of a delicate and
accurate conscience is sadly interfered with by our violent feelings.
It is this which renders ethical action so sensitive and morbid. Where
in other lines we act calmly, according to our knowledge, or, if we
err, calmly rectify the error, in ethics we are nervous, vacillating,
unduly elated or depressed, because our early teachings in this field
were so overweighted with intense feeling.
Self-control is one of the first essentials in the practice of
ethics,--which is to say, in living. Self-control can be taught a
child by gently graduated exercises, so that he shall come calmly into
his first kingdom, and exercise this normal human power without
self-consciousness. We do nothing actively to develope this power. We
simply punish the lack of it when that lack happens to be disagreeable
to us. A child who has "tantrums," for instance,--those helpless,
prostrate passions of screaming and kicking,--is treated variously
during the attack; but nothing is done during the placid interval to
cultivate the desired power of control. Self-control is involved in
all conscious acts. Therefore, it should not be hard to so arrange and
relate those acts as to steadily develope the habit.
Games in varying degree require further exertion of self-control, and
games are the child's daily lessons. The natural ethical sense of
humanity is strongly and early shown in our games. It is a joy to us
to learn "the rules" and play according to them, or to a maturer
student to grasp the principles and work them out; and our quick
condemnation of the poor player or the careless player, and our rage
at him who "does not play fair," show how naturally we incline to
right conduct. Life is a large game, with so many rules that it is
very hard to learn by them; but its principles can be taught to the
youngest. When we rightly understand those principles, we can leave
off many arbitrary rules, and greatly simplify the game. The
recognition of the rights of others is justice, and comes easily to
the child. The generosity which goes beyond justice is also natural to
the child in some degree, and open to easy culture. It should,
however, always rest on its natural precursor, justice; and the child
be led on to generosity gradually, and by the visible example of the
higher pleasure involved.
To divide the fruit evenly is the first step. To show that you enjoy
giving up your share, that you take pleasure in his pleasure, and
then, when this act is imitated, to show such delight and gratitude as
shall make the baby mind feel your satisfaction,--that is a slow but
simple process. We usually neglect the foundation of justice, and then
find it hard to teach loving-kindness to the young mind. Demands on
the child's personal surrender and generosity should be made very
gradually, and always with a clearly visible cause. Where any dawning
faculty is overstrained in youth, it is hard and slow to re-establish
the growth.
One simple ethical principle most needful in child-training, and
usually most painfully lacking, is honesty. Aside from direct lying,
we almost universally use concealment and evasion; and even earlier
than that we assume an artificial manner with babies and young
children which causes the dawning ethical sense strange perturbations.
It is a very common thing to demand from little children a show of
affection without its natural prompting. Even between mother and child
this playing at loving is often seen. "Come and kiss mamma! What!
Don't you love mamma? Poor mamma! Mamma cry!" And mamma pretends to
cry, in order to make baby pretend to love her. The adult visitor
almost invariably simulates an interest and cordiality which is not
felt, and does it in a palpably artificial manner. These may seem
small matters. We pass them without notice daily, but they are
important in the foundation impressions of the young brain. Children
are usually very keen to detect the pretence. "Oh, you don't mean
that: you only say so!" they remark. We thus help to develope a loose,
straggling sense of honesty and honour, a chronic ethical inaccuracy,
like a bad "ear" for music.
The baby-educator should see to it that she show only real feelings to
the child; and show them in large letters, as it were. Do not say,
"Mamma is angry," or "Mamma is grieved," or "Mamma is ashamed," but be
angry, grieved, or ashamed visibly. Let the child observe the effect
of his act on you, not hear you say you feel thus and so, and see no
signs of it. We depend far too much on oral statements, and neglect
the simpler, stronger, surer means of conveying impressions. The
delicacy of perception of a child should be preserved and tenderly
used. We often blur and weaken it by giving false, irregular, and
disproportionate impressions, and then are forced to use more and more
violence to make any impression at all. All this sensitiveness is to
ethics what the "musical ear" is to music. In injuring it, we make it
harder for the growing soul to discriminate delicately in ethical
questions,--a difficulty but too common among us.
The basis of human ethics, being social, requires for its growth a
growing perception of collective and inter-relative rights and duties.
Our continual object with the child is to establish in his mind this
common consciousness and an accurate measure in perception. It is at
first a simple matter of arithmetic. Here is the group of little ones,
and the equal number of cookies: palpably, each should have one. Here
is one extra cookie. Who shall have it? Robby, because his is the
smallest. Jamie cries that his is as small as Robby's. Is it? The fact
is ascertained. Divide the extra cookie, then: that's fair. Or here is
one who was not well yesterday and had no cookies. Give it to him.
These things are not to be ostentatiously done nor too continually,
but always with care and accuracy, as lessons more important than any
others. The deeper and larger sense of social duty,--not the personal
balancing of rights, which is easy to even the youngest mind, but the
devotion to the service of all, the recognition that the greater
includes the less,--this must be shown by personal example long before
it can be imitated.
Parents neglect this where it would help them most, and substitute, to
meet the child's inquiries, only personal authority and compulsion. If
the parent would constantly manifest a recognition of duty and
performance of it even against desire, it would be a great help to the
child. Most children imagine that grown persons do just as they want
to; and that the stringent code of behaviour enforced upon them is
requisite only in childhood, and enforceable only because of their
weakness. Much of the parent's conduct can be used as an object-lesson
to the child; but its skilful employment needs clear ethical
perception and much educational ability. For instance, if the mother
elaborately explains that she is obliged to do something which seems
to the child absurd, or if she claims to have to do a certain thing
which the child can see that she really enjoys, the impressions made
are not correct ones. A recognition of the importance of right
teaching of ethics to the child would help adult conduct in most
cases. And, if the child were receiving proper grounding in ethics
from a special educator, he could come home and perplex his parents
with problems, as a bright child often does now in other sciences.
This, of course, points to the need of accepted text-books on ethics,
and will allow of disputes between authorities and disagreement on
many points; but these conditions exist in all sciences. There are
different authorities and "schools," much disagreement and dispute and
varying conduct based on our various scientific beliefs. But out of
the study, discussion, and ensuing behaviour comes the gradual proof
of what is really true; and we establish certain generally accepted
facts and principles, while still allowing a margin for divergence of
opinion and further knowledge.
Our dread of studying ethics as a science on account of this
divergence of opinion is a hereditary brain tendency, due to the long
association of ethical values with one infallible religious
text-book,--Koran or Bible or Talmud or Zend-Avesta.
"It is written" was the most conclusive of statements to the ancient
mind. The modern mind ought by this time to have developed a wide and
healthy distrust of that which is written. While our "written" ethics
has remained at a standstill always until the upward sweep of social
conduct demanded and produced a better religion, our unnoticed
practice of ethics has worked out many common rules.
In the fearless study of this field of practical ethics lies our way
to such simple text-books as may be used to teach children. There is
no question as to whether we should or should not teach ethics to very
little children. We do, we must, whether we will or not. The real
question is what to teach and how. They learn from our daily walk and
conversation; and they learn strange things. Most palpable of all
among the wrong impressions given to our children is that of the
pre-eminent importance of the primitive relations of life, and the
utter unimportance of the great social relations of our time. Whatever
ideas of right and wrong the child succeeds in gathering, they are
all of a closely personal nature, based on interpersonal conduct in
the family relation, or in such restricted and shallow social
relations as is covered by our code of "company manners."
The greatest need of better ethics to-day is in our true social
relation,--the economic and political field of action in which lie our
major activities, and in which we are still so grossly uncivilised.
Not until he goes to school does the child begin to appreciate any
general basis of conduct; and even there the ethics of the position
are open to much clearer treatment.