Many of us believe exultingly that the “All power” which is given

into the hands of our Master includes the power of upright standing,

strength, and beauty for every bruised human reed. That this is so, we

have evidence in plenty, beginning with ourselves. But many others of

us, and those not the less noble, consider with Robert Elsmere, that

“miracles do not happen.” The recorded miracles serve as pegs for the

discussion; the essential miracle is the utter and immediate renovation

of a human being. Upon this possibility the saving of the world must

hang, and this many cannot receive, not because they are stiff-necked

and perverse, but because it is dead against natural law as they know

it. Proofs? Cases without end? The whole history of the Christian

Church in evidence? Yes; but the history of the Church is a chequered

one; and, for individual cases, we do not doubt the veracity of the

details; only, nobody knows the whole truth; some preparation in the

past, some motive in the present inadvertently kept out of sight, may

alter the bearings of any such case.

This is, roughly, the position of the honest sceptic, who would, if he

could, believe heartily in General Booth’s scheme, and, by consequence,

in the convertibility of the entire human race. To improve the

circumstances, even of millions, is only a question of the magnitude of

the measures taken, the wisdom of the administration. But human nature

itself, depraved human nature, is, to him, the impossible quantity.

_Can_ the leopard change his spots?

THE LAW AGAINST US--HEREDITY.

Who are they whom General Booth cheerfully undertakes to re-fashion

and make amenable to the conditions of godly and righteous and sober

living? Let us hear the life history of many of them in his own words:--

“The rakings of the human cesspool.”

“Little ones, whose parents are habitually drunk.... Whose ideas

of merriment are gained from the familiar spectacle of the nightly

debauch.”

“The obscenity of the talk of many of the children of some of our

public schools could hardly be outdone, even in Sodom and Gomorrah.”

And the childhood--save the word!--of the children of to-day reproduces

the childhood of their parents, their grand-parents, who knows? their

great-grand-parents. These are, no doubt, the worst; but the worst

must be reckoned with first, for if these slip through the meshes of

the remedial net, the masses more inert than vicious slide out through

the breaks. In the first place, then, the scheme embraces the vicious

by inheritance; proposes to mix up with the rest a class whose sole

heritage is an inconceivable and incalculable accumulation of vicious

inclinations and propensities. And this, in the face of that conception

of heredity which is quietly taking possession of the public mind, and

causing many thoughtful parents to abstain from very active efforts to

mould the characters of their children.

Those of us whose attention has been fixed upon the working of the

law of heredity until it appears to us to run its course, unmodified

and unlimited by other laws, may well be pardoned for regarding with

doubtful eye a scheme which has, for its very first condition, the

regeneration of the vicious; of the vicious by inherited propensity.

THE LAW AGAINST US--HABIT.

Use is second nature, we say. Habit is ten natures; habit begins as a

cobweb, and ends as a cable. “Oh, you’ll get used to it,” whatever it

is. Dare we face the habits in which these people have their being? It

is not only the obscene speech, the unholy acts; that which signifies

is the manner of thoughts we think; speech, act, are the mere outcome;

it is the habitual thought of a man which shapes that which we call his

character. And these, can we reasonably doubt that every imagination of

their heart is only evil continually? We say, use is second nature, but

let us consider what we mean by the phrase; what is the philosophy of

habit so far as it has been discovered to us. The seat of habit is the

brain; the actual grey nervous matter of the cerebrum. And the history

of a habit is shortly this: “The cerebrum of man grows to those modes

of thought in which it is habitually exercised.” That ‘immaterial’

thought should mould the ‘material’ brain need not surprise nor

scandalise us, for do we not see with our eyes that immaterial thought

moulds the face, forms what we call countenance, lovely or loathsome

according to the manner of thought it registers. The _how_ of this

brain growth is not yet in evidence, nor is this the time and place

to discuss it; but, bearing in mind this structural adaptation to

confirmed habit, what chance, again, we say, has a scheme which has for

its first condition the regeneration of the vicious, vicious not only

by inherited propensity, but by unbroken inveterate habit?

THE LAW AGAINST US--UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION.

Those who are accustomed to write know what it is to sit down and

“reel off” sheet after sheet of matter without plan or premeditation,

clear, coherent, ready for press, hardly needing revision. We are told

of a lawyer who wrote in his sleep a lucid opinion throwing light on

a most difficult case; of a mathematician who worked out in his sleep

a computation which baffled him when awake. We know that Coleridge

dreamed “Kubla Khan” in an after-dinner nap, line by line, and wrote

it down when he awoke. What do these cases and a thousand like them

point to? To no less than this: that, though the all important _ego_

must, no doubt, “assist” at the thinking of the initial thought on

a given subject, yet, after that first thought or two, ‘brain’ and

‘mind’ manage the matter between them, and the thoughts, so to speak,

think themselves; not after the fashion of a pendulum which moves to

and fro, to and fro, in the same interval of space, but in that of a

carriage rolling along the same road, but into ever new developments of

the landscape. An amazing thought--but have we not abundant internal

evidence of the fact? We all know that there are times when we cannot

get rid of the thoughts that _will think themselves_ within us, though

they drive away sleep and peace and joy. In the face of this law,

benign as it eases us of the labour of original thought and decision

about the everyday affairs of life, terrible when it gets beyond our

power of control and diversion, what hope for those in whose debauched

brain vile thoughts, involuntary, automatic, are for ever running with

frightful rapidity in the one well-worn track? Truly, the _in_-look

is appalling. What hope for these? And what of a scheme whose first

condition is the regeneration of the vicious--vicious, not only by

inherited propensity, and by unbroken inveterate habit, but reduced to

that state of, shall we say, inevitable viciousness--when “unconscious

cerebration,” with untiring activity, goes to the emanation of vicious

imaginations? All these things are against us.

THE LAW FOR US--LIMITATIONS TO THE DOCTRINE

OF HEREDITY.

But the last word of Science, and she has more and better words in

store, is full of hope. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, but it

is not inevitable that the children’s teeth be set on edge. The soul

that sinneth _it_ shall die, said the prophet of old, and Science is

hurrying up with her, “Even so.” The necessary corollary to the latest

modification of the theory of evolution is--_acquired modifications

of structure are not transmitted_. All hail to the good news; to

realise it, is like waking up from a hideous nightmare. This is,

definitely, our gain; the man who by the continuous thinking of

criminal thoughts has modified the structure of his brain so as to

adapt it to the current of such thoughts, does not necessarily pass on

this modification to his child. There is no necessary adaptation in

the cerebrum of the new-born child to make place for evil thoughts.

In a word, the child of the vicious may be born as fit and able for

good living as the child of the righteous. Inherent modifications are,

it is true, transmitted, and the line between inherent and acquired

modifications may not be easy to define. But, anyway, there is hope to

go on with. The child of the wicked may have as good a start in life,

so far as his birthright goes, as the child of the just. The child’s

future depends not upon his lineage so much as upon his bringing up,

for education is stronger than nature, and no human being need be given

over to despair. We need not abate our hope of the regeneration of the

vicious for the bugbear of an inheritance of irresistible propensity to

evil.

THE LAW FOR US--“ONE CUSTOM OVERCOMETH

ANOTHER.”

But habit! It is bad enough to know that use is second nature, and that

man is a bundle of habits; but how much more hopeless to look into the

_rationale_ of habit, and perceive that the enormous strength of the

habit that binds us connotes a structural modification, a shaping of

the brain tissues to the thought of which the habit is the outward and

visible sign and expression. Once such growth has taken place, is not

the thing done, so that it can’t be undone--has not the man taken shape

for life when his ways of thinking are registered in the substance of

his brain?

Not so; because one habit has been formed and registered in the brain

is no reason at all why another and contrary habit should not be formed

and registered in its turn. To-day is the day of salvation, physically

speaking, because a habit is a thing of _now_; it may be begun in a

moment, formed in a month, confirmed in three months, become the

character, the very man, in a year. There is growth to the new thoughts

in a new tract of the brain, and “One custom overcometh another.” Here

is the _natural_ preparation for salvation. The words are very old, the

words of Thomas à Kempis, but the perception that they have a literal

physical meaning has been reserved for us to-day. Only one train of

ideas can be active at one time; the old cell connections are broken,

and benign nature is busy building up the waste places, even be they

the waste places of many generations. NO ROAD is set up in the track

where the unholy thoughts carried on their busy traffic. New tissue

is formed; the wound is healed, and, save, perhaps, for a scar, some

little tenderness, that place is whole and sound as the rest.

This is how one custom overcometh another: there is no conflict,

no contention, no persuasion. Secure for the new idea a weighty

introduction, and it will accomplish all the rest for itself. It will

feed and grow; it will increase and multiply; it will run its course

of its own accord; will issue in that current of automatic unconscious

involuntary thought of the man which shapes his character. Behold, a

new man! Ye must be born again, we are told; and we say, with a sense

of superior knowledge of the laws of nature, How can a man be born

again? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?

This would be a miracle, and we have satisfied ourselves that “miracles

do not happen.” And now, at last, the miracle of conversion is made

plain to our dull understanding. We perceive that conversion, however

sudden, is no miracle at all--using the word _miracle_ to describe that

which takes place in opposition to natural law. On the contrary, we

find that every man carries in his physical substance the gospel of

perpetual, or of always possible, renovation; and we find how, from

the beginning, Nature was prepared with her response to the demand of

Grace. Is conversion possible? we ask; and the answer is, that it is,

so to speak, a function for which there is latent provision in our

physical constitution, to be called forth by the touch of a potent

idea. Truly, His commandment is exceeding broad, and grows broader day

by day with each new revelation of Science.

A man may, most men do, undergo this process of renovation many times

in their lives; whenever an idea strong enough to divert his thoughts

(as we most correctly say) from all that went before is introduced, the

man becomes a new creature; when he is “in love,” for example; when

the fascinations of art or of nature take hold of him; an access of

responsibility may bring about a sudden and complete conversion:--

The breath no sooner left his father’s body

But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment,

Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him;

Leaving his body as a paradise

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Here is a picture--psychologically true, anyway, Shakespeare makes

no mistakes in psychology--of an immediate absolute conversion. The

conversion may be to the worse, alas, and not to the better, and the

value of the conversion must depend upon the intrinsic worthiness

of the idea by whose instrumentality it is brought about. The point

worth securing is, that man carries in his physical structure the

conditions of renovation; conditions, so far as we can conceive,

always in working order, always ready to be put in force. Wherefore

“conversion” in the Biblical sense, in the sense in which the promoters

of this scheme depend upon its efficacy, though a miracle of divine

grace in so far as it is a sign and a marvel, is no miracle in the

popular sense of that which is outside of and opposed to the workings

of “natural law.” Conversion is entirely within the divine scheme of

things, even if we choose to limit our vision of that scheme to the

“few, faint, and feeble” flashes which Science is as yet able to throw

upon the mysteries of being. But is this all? Ah, no; this is no more

than the dim vestibule of nature to the temple of grace; we are not

concerned, however, to say one word here of how “great is the mystery

of godliness;” of the cherishing of the Father, the saving and the

indwelling of the Son, the sanctifying of the Spirit; neither need

we speak of “spiritual wickedness in high places.” The aim of this

slight essay is to examine the assertion that what we call conversion

is contrary to natural law; and we do this with a view, not to General

Booth’s scheme only, but to all efforts of help.

Hope shows an ever stronger case for the regeneration of the vicious.

Not only need we be no more oppressed by the fear of an inheritance of

invincible propensities to evil, but the strength of life-long habit

may be vanquished by the power of an idea, new habits of thought may be

set up on the instant, and these may be fostered and encouraged until

that habit which is ten natures is the habit of the _new_ life, and

the thoughts which, so to speak, think themselves all day long are

thoughts of purity and goodness.

THE LAW FOR US--POTENCY OF AN IDEA.

“Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,

senses, affections, passions?”

In effecting the renovation of a man the external agent is ever an

_idea_, of such potency as to be seized upon with avidity by the mind,

and, therefore, to make an impression upon the nervous substance of the

cerebrum. The potency of an idea depends upon the fact of its being

complementary to some desire or affection within the man. Man wants

knowledge, for example, and power, and esteem, and love, and company;

also, he has within him capacities for love, esteem, gratitude,

reverence, kindness. He has an unrecognised craving for an object on

which to spend the good that is in him.

The idea which makes a strong appeal to any one of his primal desires

and affections must needs meet with a response. Such idea and such

capacity are made for one another; apart, they are meaningless as ball

and socket; together, they are a _joint_, effective in a thousand ways.

But the man who is utterly depraved has no capacity for gratitude,

for example? Yes, he has; depravity is a disease, a morbid condition;

beneath is the man, capable of recovery. This is hardly the place to

consider them, but think for a moment of the fitness of the ideas

which are summed up in the thought of Christ to be presented to the

poor degraded soul: divine aid and compassion for his neglected body;

divine love for his loneliness; divine forgiveness in lieu of the shame

of his sin; divine esteem for his self-contempt; divine goodness and

beauty to call forth the passion of love and loyalty that is in him;

the Story of the Cross, the lifting up, which perhaps no human soul is

able to resist if it be fitly put. And the divine idea once received,

the divine life is imparted also, grows, is fostered and cherished by

the Holy Ghost. The man is a new creature, with other aims, and other

thoughts, and a life out of himself. The old things have passed away,

and all things have become new--the physical being embodying, so to

speak, the new life of the spirit.

We may well believe, indeed, that “conversion” is so proper to the

physical and spiritual constitution of man that it is inevitable to all

of us if only the ideas summed up in Christ be fitly introduced to the

soul.

The question then turns, not upon the possibility of converting the

most depraved, nor upon the potency of the ideas to be presented,

but altogether upon the power of putting these ideas so that a man

shall recognise and seize upon the fulness of Christ as the necessary

complement to the emptiness of which he is aware.

THE HABITS OF THE GOOD LIFE.

But, the man converted, the work is not done. These sinners exceedingly

are not only sinful, but diseased; morbid conditions of brain have

been set up, and every one of them needs individual treatment, like

any other sick man, for disease slow of cure. For a month, three

months, six months, it will not do to let one of them alone. Curative

_treatment_ is an absolute condition of success, and here is where

human co-operation is invited in what is primarily and ultimately

the work of God. There are diseased places in the brain, where ill

thoughts have of old run their course; and these sore places must have

time, blessed time, wherein to heal. That is to say, all traffic in the

old thoughts must be absolutely stopped, at whatever cost.

Think of the Army of Vigilance which must be ever on the alert to

turn away the eyes of the patients from beholding evil; for, a single

suggestion, of drink, of uncleanness, and, _presto_, the old thoughts

run riot, and the work of healing must be begun anew. And, how to

keep out the old, but by administering the thoughts of the new life

watchfully, one by one, as they are needed, and can be taken; offering

them with engaging freshness, with comforting fitness, until at last

the period of anxious nursing is over, the habits of the good life are

set up, and the patient is able to stand on his own feet and labour for

his own meat. This is no work to be undertaken wholesale. The spiritual

care of a multitude diseased, even physically diseased, of sin, is no

light thing. And if it be not undertaken systematically, and carried

out efficiently, the whole scheme must of necessity fall through. Who

is sufficient for these things? No one, perhaps; but a following of a

great corps of nurses trained to minister to minds diseased, and with

the experience and the method belonging to a professional calling, is

surely, a fitting qualification for the Herculean task.

THE EASE OF DISCIPLINE.

How readily we can understand how, in the days when monarchs were

more despotic than they are now, one and another would take refuge in

a convent for the ease of doing the will of another rather than his

own! Is not this the attraction of conventual life to-day, and is not

this why the idea of the Salvation Army is powerfully attractive to

some of us who know, all the same, that we (individually) should be

wrong to lay down our proper function of ordering and acting out our

own lives. But for these, strong of impulse and weak of will, who have

no power at all to do the good they vaguely and feebly desire, oh,

the ease of being taken up into a strong and beneficent organisation,

of having their comings and goings, their doings and havings, ordered

for them! Organisation, regimentation, we are reminded, make a hero

of Tommy Atkins. And these all have it in them to be heroes, because,

restlessness, rebellion, once subdued, they will rejoice more than any

others in the ease of simply doing as they are bidden. Here is a great

secret of power, to treat these, lapsed and restored, like children;

for what is the object of family discipline, of that obedience which

has been described as “the whole duty of a child”? Is it not to ease

the way of the child, while will is weak and conscience immature, by

setting it on the habits of the good life where it is as easy to go

right as for a locomotive to run on its lines? Just such present relief

from responsibility, such an interval for development, do these poor

children of larger growth demand for their needs; and any existing

possibility of ordering and disciplining this mixed multitude must

needs appear to us a surpassing adaptation of “supply” to “demand.”

The saving grace of work, and the healing power of the fresh air,

again, should do their part in the restoration of the “submerged.” But

it is not our part to examine the methods proposed by General Booth,

or to adumbrate his chances of success. Our concern is solely with the

children. No doubt this great social scheme has been discussed, more

or less, in every family, and the attitude of thought towards all good

work which the children will henceforth take may depend very much upon

how far the underlying principles are made clear to them in one such

typical instance. Whatever the agency, let the children be assured that

the work is the work of God, to be accomplished in the strength of God,

according to the laws of God; that it is our part to make ourselves

acquainted with the laws we would work out, and that, having done all,

we wait for the inspiration of the divine life, even as the diligent

farmer waits upon sunshine and shower.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Issue of _Darkest England_.

CHAPTER XVI

_DISCIPLINE_

What part does Discipline play in your system of education? We should

hail the query as manifesting a cheering degree of interest if we were

not quite sure that our interlocutor uses discipline as a euphuism

for punishment. That conviction puts one’s mind into the attitude

of protest. In the first place, we have no system of education. We

hold that great things, such as nature, life, education are “cabined,

cribbed, confined” in proportion as they are systematised. We have a

_method_ of education, it is true, but method is no more than a way to

an end and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature herself. Method has

a few comprehensive laws according to which details shape themselves,

as one naturally shapes one’s behaviour to the acknowledged law that

fire burns. System, on the contrary, has an infinity of rules and

instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it. Method

in education follows Nature humbly, stands aside and gives her fair

play.

System leads Nature: assists, supplements, rushes in to undertake

those very tasks which Nature has made her own since the world was.

Does Nature endow every young thing, child or kitten, with a wonderful

capacity for inventive play? Nay, but, says System, I can help here; I

will invent games for the child and help his plays, and make more use

of this power of his than unaided Nature knows how. So Dame System

teaches the child to play, and he enjoys it; but, alas, there is no

play in him, no initiative, when he is left to himself; and so on all

along the lines. System is fussy and zealous and produces enormous

results--in the teacher! Method pursues a “wise passiveness.” You

watch the teacher and are hardly aware that he is doing anything. The

children take the initiative, but, somehow, the result here is in these

and not in the teacher. They develop, become daily more and more of

persons, with

“The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.”

Such as these are the golden fruits which ripen under the eyes of the

parent who is wise to discriminate between the _rôle_ of nature and

that of the educator, who follows sympathetically and dutifully the

lead of the great mother.

“Oh, then you have no discipline. I thought not. I daresay it would

answer very well to leave children to themselves and make them happy.

Children are always good when they are happy, are they not?” Not so

fast, dear reader. He who would follow a great leader must needs

endeavour himself, _Ohne Hast ohne Rast_, and the divine lead which

we call Nature is infinitely blessed in the following, but steep to

tread and hard to find and by no means to be confounded with leisurely

strolling in ways of our own devising.

The parent who would educate his children, in any large sense of the

word, must lay himself out for high thinking and lowly living; the

highest thinking indeed possible to the human mind and the simplest,

directest living.

This thought of discipline, for example, is one of the large

comprehensive ideas which must inform and direct the life, rather

than be gathered up into a rule, easy to remember and easy to apply,

when, now and then, comes the occasion for it. If Tommy is naughty,

whip him and send him to bed--is a ready-reckoner kind of rule, handy

to have about one, and is the sort of thing which many people mean by

discipline. Now we would not say that punishment is never to be used,

very much otherwise. Neither would we say that physic is never to be

taken. But punishment, like physic, is a casualty only of occasional

occurrence at the worst, and punishment and physic alike are reduced

to a minimum in proportion as we secure healthy conditions of body and

mind. We are not anxious to lay down canons for punishment. Mr. Herbert

Spencer has not perhaps said the last word, but he has given us a

quite convenient rule to go on with. A child should be punished by the

natural consequences of his offence. To carry this suggestion out _au

pied de la lettre_ would often enough mean lasting, even fatal injury

to the child, bodily and mental. You cannot let the indolent child be

punished by ignorance, or the wilful and adventurous child break his

limb; but, so far as punishments have been allowed to become necessary,

the nature of the offence gives one a clue to a suitable punishment.

The child who does not eat his porridge goes without his plum. This is,

anyway, a punishment in kind, perhaps the nearest approach to natural

consequences which it is advisable to try.

But parents should face the fact that children rather enjoy

punishments. In these they find the opportunities, so frequent is

story-books, so rare in real life, for showing a fine pluck. The child

who is in punishment is very commonly enjoying himself immensely,

because he is respecting himself intensely. There is a bit of heroism

in the bearing of the penalty which is very apt to do away with any

sense of contrition for the offence, and the plucky little fellow, who

takes his punishment with an air, is by no means a bad and hardened

young offender, but is an economist of opportunities, making the

best of what comes to hand for his own real education. His mother’s

distress, his father’s disapproval, these are quite different matters,

and carry no compensating sense of hardihood. Reflections like these

lead one to spare the rod, not at all out of over sensibility to the

child’s physical suffering, for we would have him endure hardness if we

mean to make a man of him, but purely because it is not easy to find a

punishment that does not defeat its own end.

The light smart slap, with which the mother visits the little child

when he is naughty, is often both effective and educative. It changes

the current of baby’s thoughts, and he no longer wishes to pull his

sister’s hair. But should not the slap be a last resort when no other

way is left of changing his thoughts? With the older child a theory

of punishments rests less upon the necessity to change the culprit’s

thoughts than upon the hope of forming a new association of ideas, that

is, of certain pains and penalties inevitably attached to certain forms

of wrong-doing. This, we know too well, is a teaching of life, and is

not to be overlooked in education. The experience of each of us goes to

prove that every breach of law, in thought or deed, is attended by its

own penalties, immediate or remote, and the child who is not brought

up to know that “due follows deed in course,” is sent out to his first

campaign undrilled and untrained, a raw recruit.

Our contention is (_a_), that the need for punishment is mostly

preventable, and (_b_), that the fear of punishment is hardly ever

so strong a motive as the delight of the particular wrong-doing in

view. If punishment were necessarily reformative and able to cure us

all of those “sins we have a mind to,” why, the world would be a very

good world, for no manner of sin escapes its present punishment. The

fact is, not that punishment is unnecessary or that it is useless,

but that it is inadequate and barely touches our aim; which is, not

the visitation of the offence, but the correction of that fault of

character of which the offence is the outcome. Jemmy tells lies and

we punish him, and by so doing we mark our sense of the offence; but,

probably, no punishment could be invented drastic enough to cure Jemmy

of telling lies in the future, and this is the thing to be aimed at.

No, we must look deeper; we must find out what weak place in character,

what false habit of thinking, leads Jemmy to tell lies, and we must

deal with this false habit in the only possible way, by forming the

contrary habit of true thinking, which will make Jemmy grow up a true

man. “I think I have never told a lie since,” said a lady, describing

the single conversation in which her father cured her of lying by

setting up an altogether new train of thought.

Not mere spurts of occasional punishment, but the incessant

watchfulness and endeavour which go to the forming and preserving

of the habits of the good life, is what we mean by discipline, and

from this point of view never were there such disciplinarians as the

parents who labour on the lines we indicate. Every habit of courtesy,

consideration, order, neatness, punctuality, truthfulness, is itself a

schoolmaster, and orders life with the most unfailing diligence.

A habit is so easily formed, so strong to compel. There are few

parents who would not labour diligently if for every month’s labour

they were able to endow one of their children with £1000. But, in a

month, a parent may form a habit in his child of such infinite value

that your thousand pounds is a mere bagatelle by comparison. We have

often urged that the great discovery which modern science has brought

to the aid of the educator is, that every habit of the life sets up, as

it were, a material record in the brain tissues. We all know that we

think as we are used to think and act as we are used to act. Ever since

man began to notice the ways of his own mind this law of habit has been

matter of common knowledge, and has been more or less acted upon by

parents and other trainers of children. The well brought-up child has

always been a child carefully trained in good habits. But it is only

within our own day that it has been possible to lay down definite laws

for the formation of habits. Until now, the mother who wished to train

her children in such and such a good habit has found herself hindered

by a certain sense of casualty. “I am sure I am always telling her”--to

keep her drawers neat, or to hold up her head and speak nicely, or to

be quick and careful about an errand,--says the poor mother, with tears

in her eyes; and indeed this, of “always telling” him or her is a weary

process for the mother; dull, because hopeless. She goes on “telling”

to deliver her own soul, for she has long since ceased to expect any

result; and we know how dreary is work without hope. But, perhaps

even his mother does not know how unutterably dreary is this “always

telling,” which produces nothing, to the child. At first he is fretful

and impatient under the patter of idle words; then he puts up with

the inevitable, but comes at last hardly to be aware that the thing is

being said. As for any impression on his character, any habit really

formed, all this labour is without result; the child does the thing

when he cannot help it and evades as often as he can. And the poor

disappointed mother says, “I’m sure I’ve tried as much as any mother

to train my children in good habits, but I have failed.” She is not

altogether dispirited, however. The children have not the habits she

wished to train them in, but they grow up warm-hearted, good-natured,

bright young people, by no means children to be ashamed of. All the

same, the mother’s sense of failure is a monition to be trusted. Our

failures in life are, perhaps, due, for the most part, to the defects

of our qualities, and, therefore, it is not enough to send children

into the world with just the inheritance of character they get from

their parents.

Let us offer a few definite practical counsels to a parent who wishes

to deal seriously with a bad habit. _First._--Let us remember that this

bad habit has made its record in the brain. _Second._--There is one

way only of obliterating such record; the absolute cessation of the

habit for a considerable space of time, say, some six or eight weeks.

_Third._--During this interval new growth, new cell connections, are

somehow or other taking place, and the physical seat of the evil is

undergoing a natural healing. _Fourth._--But the only way to secure

this pause is to introduce some new habit as attractive to the child

as is the wrong habit you set yourself to cure. _Fifth._--As the bad

habit usually arises from the defect of some quality in the child it

should not be difficult for the parent who knows his child’s character

to introduce the contrary good habit. _Sixth._--Take a moment of happy

confidence between parent and child; introduce, by tale or example,

the stimulating idea; get the child’s will with you. _Seventh._--Do

not tell him to do the new thing, but quietly and cheerfully _see that

he does it_ on all possible occasions, for weeks if need be, all the

time stimulating the new idea, until it takes great hold of the child’s

imagination. _Eighth._--Watch most carefully against any recurrence of

the bad habit. _Ninth._--Should the old fault recur, do not condone it.

Let the punishment, chiefly the sense of your estrangement, be acutely

felt. Let the child feel the shame of not only having done wrong, but

of having done the wrong when it was perfectly easy to avoid the wrong

and do the right. Above all “watch unto prayer” and teach your child

dependence upon divine aid in this warfare of the spirit; but also, the

absolute necessity for his own efforts.

Susie is an inquisitive little girl. Her mother is surprised and

not always delighted to find that the little maid is constantly on

voyages of discovery, which the servants speak of to each other as

prying and poking. Is her mother engaged in talk with a visitor or

the nurse--behold, Susie is at her side, sprung from nobody knows

where. Is a confidential letter being read aloud--Susie is within

earshot. Does the mother think she has put away a certain book where

the children cannot find it--Susie volunteers to produce it. Does she

tell her husband that cook has asked for two days leave of absence--up

jumps Susie, with all the ins and outs of the case. “I really don’t

know what to do with the child. It is difficult to put down one’s foot

and say you ought not to know this or that or the other. Each thing

in itself is harmless enough, but it is a little distressing to have

a child who is always peering about for gossipy information.” Yes,

it is tiresome, but is not a case for despair, nor for thinking hard

things of Susie, certainly not for accepting the inevitable. Regarding

this tiresome curiosity as the defect of its quality, the mother casts

about for the quality, and, behold, Susie is reinstated. What ails the

child is an inordinate desire for knowledge, run to seed, and allowed

to spend itself on unworthy objects. When the right moment comes,

introduce Susie to some delightful study, of Nature, for example, which

will employ all her prying proclivities. Once the new idea has taken

possession of the little girl, a little talk should follow about the

unworthiness of filling one’s thoughts with trifling matters so that

nothing really interesting can get in. For weeks together see that

Susie’s mind is too full of large matters to entertain the small ones;

and, once the inquisitive habit has been checked, encourage the child’s

active mind to definite progressive work on things worth while. Susie’s

unworthy curiosity will soon cease to be a trial to her parents.

CHAPTER XVII

_SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS_

PART I

Children whose parents have little theoretic knowledge of the values

of the various food-stuffs are often thoroughly nourished; their

parents rely on what they call common-sense; and the result is, on

the whole, better than if scientific consideration were given to the

family dietary. But this common-sense has usually scientific opinion

for its basis, though the fact may be forgotten, and when scientific

opinion has become the groundwork of habit it is of more value, and

works in a more simple way, than while it is still in the stage

of experiment. In the same way it is a good thing to have such an

acquaintance with the functions of human nature that we act on our

knowledge unconsciously, and do not even know that we possess it. But

if we have no such floating capital of cognisance we must study the

subject, even if we have to make experiments. Most people suppose that

the sensations, feelings, and emotions of a child are matters that

take care of themselves. Indeed, we are apt to use the three terms

indiscriminately, without attaching very clear ideas to them. But they

cover, collectively, a very important educational field; and though

common sense, that is to say judgments formed upon inherited knowledge,

often helps us to act wisely without knowing why, we shall probably

act more wisely if we act reasonably.

Let us consider, first, the subject of sensations. We speak of

sensations of cold, and sensations of heat, and sensations of pain, and

we are quite right. We also speak of sensations of fear and sensations

of pleasure, and we are commonly wrong. The sensations have their

origin in impressions received by the several organs of sense--eye,

tongue, nostrils, ear, the surface of the external skin--and are

conveyed by the sensory nerves, some to the spinal cord and some to

the lower region of the brain. Many sensations we know nothing about;

when we become aware of our sensations it is because communications are

sent by nerve fibres, acting as telegraph wires, from the sensorium to

the thinking brain, and this happens when we give our _attention_ to

any one of the multitudinous messages carried by the sensory nerves.

The physiology of the senses is too complicated a subject for us to

touch upon here, but it is deeply interesting, and perhaps no better

introduction exists than Professor Clifford’s little book, “Seeing

and Thinking” (Macmillan). Now the senses are “The Five Gateways of

Knowledge,” to quote the title of a little book which many of us have

used in early days; and an intelligent person should be aware of, and

capable of forming judgments upon, the sensations he receives.

We all recognise that the training of the senses is an important

part of education. One caution is necessary: from the very first a

child’s sensations should be treated as matters of objective and not

of subjective interest. Marmalade, for example, is interesting, not

because it is “nice”--a fact not to be dwelt upon at all--but because

one can discern in it different flavours and the modifying effect of

the oil secreted in the rind of the orange. We shall have occasion to

speak more of this subject later; but a useful piece of education is

this of centering a child’s interest in the objects which produce his

sensations and not in himself as the receiver of these sensations.

The purpose of so-called object lessons is, to assist a child, by

careful examination of a given object, to find out all he can about it

through the use of his several senses. General information about the

object is thrown in and lodges only because the child’s senses have

been exercised, and his interest aroused. Object lessons are a little

in disfavour, just now, for two reasons. In the first place, miserable

fragments are presented to the children which have little of the

character of the object _in situ_, and are apt to convey inadequate,

if not wrong, ideas. In the next place, object lessons are commonly

used as a means to introduce children to hard words, such as opaque and

translucent, which never become part of their living thought until they

pick them up for themselves incidentally as they have need of them. But

the abuse of this kind of teaching should not cause us to overlook its

use. No child can grow up without daily object teaching, whether casual

or of set purpose, and the more thorough this is the more intelligent

and observant will he become. It is singular how few people are capable

of developing an intelligent curiosity about the most attractive

objects, except as their interest is stimulated from without. The baby

is a wonderful teacher in this matter of object lessons. To be sure

his single pupil is his own small self, but his progress is amazing.

At first he does not see any difference between a picture of a cow and

the living animal; big and little, far and near, hard and soft, hot

and cold, are all alike to him; he wishes to hold the moon in his

pinafore, to sit on the pond, to poke his finger into the candle, not

because he is a foolish little person, but because he is profoundly

ignorant of the nature of the contents of this unintelligible world.

But how he works! he bangs his spoon to try if it produces sound; he

sucks it to try its flavour; he fumbles it all over and no doubt finds

out whether it is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth; he gazes

at it with the long gaze of infancy, so that he may learn the look of

it; it is an old friend and an object of desire when he sees it again,

for he has found out that there is much joy in a spoon. This goes on

with great diligence for a couple of years, at the end of which time

baby has acquired enough knowledge of the world to conduct himself in a

very dignified and rational way.

This is what happens under Nature’s teaching; and for the first five

or six years of his life everything, especially everything in action,

is an object of intelligent curiosity to the child--the street or the

field is a panorama of delight, the shepherd’s dog, the baker’s cart,

the man with the barrow, are full of vivid interest. He has a thousand

questions to ask, he wants to know about everything; he has, in fact,

an inordinate appetite for knowledge. We soon cure all that: we occupy

him with books instead of things; we evoke other desires in place of

the desire to know; and we succeed in bringing up the unobservant

man (and more unobservant woman), who discerns no difference between

an elm, a poplar and a lime tree, and misses very much of the joy of

living. By the way, why is it that the baby does not exercise with

purpose his organ of smell? He screws up a funny little nose when he

is taught to sniff at a flower, but this is a mere trick; he does not

naturally make experiments as to whether things are odorous, while each

of his other senses affords him keen joy. No doubt the little nose is

involuntarily very active, but can his inertness in this matter be an

hereditary failing? It may be that we all allow ourselves to go about

with obtuse nostrils. If so, this is a matter for the attention of

mothers, who should bring up their children not only to receive, which

is involuntary and vague, but to perceive odours from the first.

Two points call for our attention in this education of the senses; we

must assist the child to educate himself on Nature’s lines, and we must

take care not to supplant and crowd out Nature and her methods with

that which we call education. Object lessons should be incidental;

and this is where the family enjoys so great an advantage over the

school. It is almost impossible that the school should give any but

set lessons, but this sort of teaching in the family falls in with

the occurrence of the object. The child who finds that wonderful and

beautiful object, a “paper” wasp’s nest, attached to a larch-twig, has

his object lesson on the spot from father or mother. The grey colour,

the round symmetrical shape, the sort of cup and ball arrangement,

the papery texture, the comparative size, the comparative smoothness,

the odour or lack of odour, the extreme lightness, the fact that it

is not cold to the touch. These and fifty other particulars the child

finds out unaided, or with no more than a word, here and there, to

direct his observation. One does not every day find a wasp’s nest,

but much can be got out of every common object, and the commoner the

better, which falls naturally under the child’s observation, a piece of

bread, a lump of coal, a sponge. In the first place it is unnecessary

in the family to give an exhaustive examination to every object; one

quality might be discussed in this, another quality in that. We eat

our bread and milk and notice that bread is absorbent, and we overhaul

our experience to discover other things which we know to be absorbent

also, and we do what we can to compare these things as to whether they

are less absorbent or more absorbent than bread. This is exceedingly

important: the unobservant person states that an object is light and

considers that he has stated an ultimate fact: the observant person

makes the same statement, but has in his mind a relative scale, and

his judgment is of the more value because he compares it silently

with a series of substances to which this is relatively light. It is

important that children should learn to recognise that high, low,

sweet, bitter, long, short, agreeable, &c., &c., are comparative terms,

while square, round, black, white, are positive terms, the application

of which is not affected by comparison with other objects. Care in this

matter makes for higher moral, as well as intellectual development:

half the dissensions in the world arise from an indiscriminate use of

epithets. “Would you say your bread (at dinner) was light or heavy?”

The child would probably answer, “rather light.” “Yes, we can only say

that a thing is light by comparing it with others; what is bread light

compared with?” “A stone, a piece of coal, of cheese, of butter of the

same size.” “But it is heavy compared with?” “A piece of sponge cake,

a piece of sponge, of cork, of pumice,” and so on. “What do you think

it weighs?” “An ounce, an ounce and a half.” “We’ll try after dinner;

you had better have another piece and save it,” and the weighing after

dinner is a delightful operation. The power of judging of weight is

worth cultivating. We heard the other day of a gentleman who was

required at a bazaar to guess the weight of a monster cake; he said

it weighed twenty-eight pounds fourteen ounces, and it did, exactly.

_Cæteris paribus_, one has a greater respect for the man who made this

accurate judgment than for the well-intentioned but vague person, who

suggested that the cake might weigh ten pounds. Letters, book parcels,

an apple, an orange, a vegetable marrow, fifty things in the course of

the day give opportunities for this kind of object teaching, _i.e._,

the power of forming accurate judgments as to the relative and absolute

weight of objects by their resistance, which is perceived by our sense

of touch, though opposed to our muscular force. By degrees the children

are trained to perceive that the relative weights of objects depend

upon their relative density, and are introduced to the fact that we

have a standard of weight.

In the same way children should be taught to measure objects by

the eye. How high is that candlestick? How long and broad that

picture-frame? and so on--verifying their statements. What is the

circumference of that bowl? of the clock-face? of that flower-bed? How

tall is so-and-so, and so-and-so? How many hands high are the horses

of their acquaintance? Divide a slip of wood, a sheet of paper into

halves, thirds, quarters by the eye; lay a walking-stick at right

angles with another; detect when a picture, curtain, &c., hangs out of

the perpendicular. This sort of practice will secure for children what

is called a correct or true eye.

A quick and true ear is another possession that does not come by

Nature, or anyway, if it does, it is too often lost. How many sounds

can you distinguish in a sudden silence out of doors? Let these be

named in order from the less to the more acute. Let the notes of the

birds be distinguished, both call-notes and song-notes; the four or

five distinct sounds to be heard in the flow of a brook. Cultivate

accuracy in distinguishing footfalls and voices; in discerning, with

their eyes shut, the direction from which a sound proceeds, in which

footsteps are moving. Distinguish passing vehicles by their sounds;

as lorry, brougham, dog-cart. Music is, no doubt, the instrument _par

excellence_ for this kind of ear culture. Mrs. Curwen’s “Child Pianist”

puts carefully graduated means for this kind of culture into the hands

of parents; and, if a child never become a performer, to have acquired

a cultivated and correct ear is no small part of a musical education.

We do not attach enough importance to the discrimination of odours,

whether as a safeguard to health, or as a source of pleasure. Half the

people one knows have nostrils which register no difference between the

atmosphere of a large, and so-called “airy,” room, whose windows are

never opened, and that of a room in which a through current of air is

arranged for at frequent intervals: and yet health depends largely on

a delicate perception as to the purity of the atmosphere. The odours

which result in diphtheria or typhoid are perceptible, however faint,

and a nose trained to detect the faintest malodorous particles in food,

clothing, or dwelling, is a panoply against disease to the possessor.

Then, odours enter more readily than other sense perceptions into

those--

“Sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,”

which add so much to the sum of our happiness, because they unite

themselves so readily with our purely incorporeal joys by links of

association. “I never smell woodruff without being reminded----”

is the sort of thing we hear and say continually, but we do not

trouble ourselves to realise that we owe a double joy to the odour

of the woodruff (or it may be, alas! a reflected sorrow)--the joy of

the pleasant influences about us when we pluck the flower, and the

possibly more personal joy of that other time with which we associate

it. Every new odour perceived is a source, if not of warning, of

recurrent satisfaction or interest. We are acquainted with too few of

the odours which the spring-time offers. Only this spring the present

writer learned two peculiarly delightful odours quite new to her,

that of young larch twigs, which have much the same kind and degree

of fragrance as the flower of the syringa, and the pleasant musky

aroma of a box-hedge. Children should be trained, for example, to shut

their eyes when they come into the drawing-room and discover by their

nostrils what odorous flowers are present, should discriminate the

garden odours let loose by a shower of rain:--

“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with

perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it.

* * * * *

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation,

it is odourless,

It is for my mouth for ever, I am in love with it.

* * * * *

The sniff of green leaves, and dry leaves, and of the shore, and

dark-coloured sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn.”

--The American poet has, perhaps, done more than any other to express

the pleasure to be found in odours. This is one direction in which

much remains to be done; we have not yet arrived even at a scale of

odours, as of sound and of colour.

Flavour, again, offers a wide range for delicate discrimination. At

first sight it would appear difficult to cultivate the sense of flavour

without making a child more or less of a gourmand, but the fact is,

that the strong flavours which titillate the palate destroy the power

of perception. The young child who lives upon milk-foods has, probably,

more pleasure in flavour than the diner-out who is _au fait_ with the

confections of a _cordon bleu_. At the same time, one would prefer to

make flavour a source of interest rather than of sensuous pleasure to

children: it is better that they should try to discern a flavour with

their eyes shut, for example, than that they should be allowed to think

or say that things are “nice” or “nasty.” This sort of fastidiousness

should be cried down. It is not well to make a child eat what he does

not like, as that would only make him dislike that particular dish

always; but to let him feel that he shows a want of self-control and

manliness when he expresses distaste for wholesome food is likely to

have a lasting effect.

We have barely touched on the sorts of object lessons, appealing now

to one sense and now to another, which should come incidentally every

day in the family. We are apt to regard an American Indian as a quite

uneducated person; he is, on the contrary, highly educated in so far

as that he is able to discriminate sensory impressions, and to take

action upon these in a way which is bewildering to the book-learned

European. It would be well for parents to educate a child, for the

first half-dozen years of his life at any rate, on “Red Indian”

lines. Besides the few points we have mentioned, he should be able

to discriminate colours and shades of colour; relative degrees of

heat in woollen, wood, iron, marble, ice; should learn the use of the

thermometer; should discriminate objects according to their degrees of

hardness; should have a cultivated eye and touch for texture; should,

in fact, be able to get as much information about an object from a

few minutes’ study, as to its form, colour, texture, size, weight,

qualities, parts, characteristics, as he could learn out of many pages

of a printed book. We approach the subject by the avenue of the child’s

senses rather than by that of the objects to be studied, because just

now we have in view the occasional test exercises, the purpose of which

is to give thorough culture to the several senses. An acquaintance with

nature and natural objects is another thing, and is to be approached

in a slightly different way. A boy who is observing a beetle does not

consciously apply his several senses to the beetle, but lets the beetle

take the initiative, which the boy reverently follows: but the boy who

is in the habit of doing daily sensory gymnastics will learn a great

deal more about the beetle than he who is not so trained.

Definite object lessons differ from these incidental exercises in that

an object is in a manner exhausted by each of the senses in turn and

every atom of information it will yield got out of it. A good plan is

to make this sort of a lesson a game, pass your object round--piece of

bread, for example--and let each child tell some fact that he discovers

by touch, another round by smell, again by taste, and again by sight.

Children are most ingenious in this kind of game, and it affords

opportunities to give them new words, as friable, elastic, when they

really ask to be helped to express some discovery they have made. The

children learn to think with exactitude too, to distinguish between

friable and brittle, for example, and any common information that is

offered to them in the course of these exercises becomes a possession

for ever. A good game in the nature of an object lesson, suitable for a

birthday party, is to have a hundred small objects arranged on a table,

unknown to the children, then lead the little party into the room,

allow them three minutes to walk round the table, and then, when they

have left the room, let them write, or tell in a corner, the names of

all the objects they recollect. Some children will easily get fifty or

sixty.

No doubt the best and happiest exercise of the senses springs out

of a loving familiarity with the world of nature, but the sorts of

gymnastics we have indicated render the perceptions more acute and

are greatly enjoyed by children. That the sensations should not be

permitted to minister unduly to the subjective consciousness of the

child is the great point to be borne in mind.

CHAPTER XVIII

_SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS_

PART II

“These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye;

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration:--feelings, too,

Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.”

--W. WORDSWORTH, _Tintern Abbey_.

Insight--the so to speak scientific grip of a great poet--is amongst

those “more things” in heaven and earth than our philosophy has dreamed

of. Wordsworth tells us that after the lapse of years, these beauteous

forms (of Tintern Abbey) gave him sensations. Now we are apt to think

that sensations can only be immediate, perceived on the instant that

the object is present to the senses; but the poet is, as usual,

absolutely right: we may have, so to speak, reflected sensations, as

well as those that are immediate, because a conscious sensation depends

upon the recognition of an impression in the sensory centres, and this

recognition may be evoked, not only by a repeated sensation, but by

an association which recalls the image once permanently impressed by

the original sensation. Wordsworth is exquisitely right when he speaks

of the repeated enjoyment of sensations sweet. “In lonely rooms and

’mid the din of towns and cities” some sudden touch of the cords of

association has brought to him the soothing joy of a picture--“Forms”

with every grace of symmetry, harmony, venerable antiquity, in the ever

fresh and gracious setting of a beautiful landscape. The eye of his

mind is infinitely gladdened; the ear of his mind, no longer conscious

of the din of cities, hears the chord struck by the Wye in its flow,

and the notes of the birds and the lowing of the cattle and the

acuter notes of the insect world. Again he perceives the odour of the

meadow-sweet, he touches the coolness of the grass, and all these are

as absolutely sensations as when they were for the first time conveyed

to his consciousness by the sensory organs.

We have in these few lines a volume of reasons why we should fill

the storehouse of memory for the children with many open-air images,

capable of giving them reflected sensations of extreme delight. Our

care all the time must be to secure that they do look, and listen,

touch, and smell, and the way to this is by sympathetic action on

our part: what we look at they will look at; the odours we perceive

they too will get. We heard, the other day, of a little girl who

travelled in Italy with her parents, in the days of dignified family

travelling-carriages. The child’s parents were conscientious, and

time was precious, not by any means to be wasted on the mere idleness

of travelling, so the governess and the little girl had the _coupé_

to themselves, and in it were packed all the paraphernalia of the

schoolroom, and she did her sums, learned her geography, probably the

counties of England, and all the rest of it, with the least possible

waste of time in idle curiosity as to what the “faire londes,” through

which she was passing, might be like. A story like this shows that

we are making advances, but we are still far from fully recognising

that our part in the education of children should be thoughtfully

subordinated to that played by Nature herself.

To continue our study of this amazingly accurate, as well as

exquisitely beautiful, psychological record:--the poet goes on to tell

us that these sensations sweet are “felt in the blood and felt along

the heart,” a statement curiously true to fact, for a pleasurable

sensation causes the relaxation of the infinitesimal nerve fibres

netted around the capillaries, the blood flows freely, the heart

beats quicker, the sense of well-being is increased; gaiety, gladness

supervene; and the gloom of the dull day, and the din of the busy city,

exist for us no more; that is to say, memories of delight are, as it

were, an elixir of life capable, when they present themselves, of

restoring us at any moment to a condition of physical well-being.

But even this is not the whole. Wordsworth speaks of these memories as

“passing into my purer mind with tranquil restoration”--purer because

less corporeal, less affected by physical conditions, but all the same

so intimately related to the physical brain, that the condition of the

one must rule the other. Mind and brain perhaps have been alike fagged

by the insistent recurrence of some one line of thought, when suddenly

there flashes into the “purer mind” the cognition of images of delight,

represented in consequence of a touch to some spring of association:

the current of thought is diverted into new and delightful channels,

and weariness and brain fag give place to “tranquil restoration.”

If mere sensations are capable of doing so much for our happiness, our

mental refreshment, and our physical well-being, both at the time of

their reception and for an indefinite number of times afterwards, it

follows that it is no small part of our work as educators to preserve

the acuteness of the children’s perceptions, and to store their

memories with images of delight.

The poet pursues the investigation and makes a pointed distinction;

he not only recovers “sensations sweet,” but “feelings, too, of

unremembered pleasure.” Very few persons are capable of discriminating

between the sensations and the feelings produced by an image recovered

by some train of association. Wordsworth’s psychology is not only

delicately nice, but very just, and the distinction he draws is

important to the educator. The truth is “the feelings” are out of

fashion at present; _The Man of Feeling_ is a person of no account;

if he still exists he keeps in the shade, being aware, through a

certain quickness of perception which belongs to him, that any little

efflorescence proper to his character would be promptly reduced to

pulp by the application of a sledge hammer. _The Man of Feeling_ has

himself to thank for this; he allowed his feelings to become fantastic;

his sweet sensibilities ran away with him; he meant pathos and talked

bathos; he became an exaggerated type, and in self-preservation Society

always cut off the offending limb, so _The Man of Feeling_ is no more.

Nor is this the only charge that “the feelings” have to sustain. So

long as the feelings remain objective they are, like the bloom to the

peach, the last perfection of a beautiful character; but when they

become subjective, when every feeling concerns itself with the _ego_,

we have, as in the case of sensations, morbid conditions set up; the

person begins by being “over sensitive,” hysteria supervenes, perhaps

melancholia, an utterly spoilt life. George Eliot has a fine figure

which aptly illustrates this subjective condition of the feelings. She

tells us that a philosophic friend had pointed out to her that whereas

the surface of a mirror or of a steel plate may be covered with minute

scratches going in every direction, if you hold a lighted candle to

the surface all these random scratches appear to arrange themselves

and radiate from the central flame: just so with the person whose

feelings have been permitted to minister to his egoistic consciousness:

all things in heaven and earth are “felt” as they affect his own

personality.

What are the feelings? Perhaps they are best expressed in Coleridge’s

phrase of “a vague appetency of the mind”; and we may do something to

clear our thoughts by a negative examination. The feelings are _not_

sensations, because they have no necessary connection with the senses;

they are to be distinguished from the two great affections (of love and

justice) because they are not actively exercised upon any objects; they

are distinct from the desires because they demand no gratification; and

they are distinguishable from the intellectual operations which we call

thought, because while thought proceeds from an idea, is active, and

arrives at a result, the feelings arise from perceptions, are passive,

and not definitely progressive.

Every feeling has its positive and its negative, and these in almost

infinitely varying degrees: pleasure, displeasure; appreciation,

depreciation; anticipation, foreboding; admiration, contempt;

assurance, hesitancy; diffidence, complacency; and so on through

many more delicate _nuances_ of feeling that are nameable, and yet

more so delicate that language is too rough an instrument for their

expression. It will be observed that all these feelings have certain

conditions in common; none are distinctly moral or immoral; they have

not arrived at the stage of definite thought; they exist vaguely in

what would appear to be a semi-conscious intellectual region. Why then

need we concern ourselves about this little known tract of that _terra

incognita_ which we call human nature? This “why” is the question

of the prose-philosopher--our poet sees deeper. In one of the most

exquisitely discriminating passages in the whole field of poetry,

he speaks of feelings of unremembered pleasure as having no slight

or trivial influence on a good man’s life, as the source of “little

nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” Even the feeling

of “_unremembered_ pleasure”--for it is possible to have the spring of

association touched so lightly that one recovers the feeling of former

pleasure without recovering the sensation, or the image which produced

the sensation, but merely just the vague feeling of the pleasure, as

when one hears the word ‘Lohengrin’ and does not wait, as it were,

to recover the sensation of musical delight, but just catches a waft

of the pleasure which the sensation brought--intangible, indefinite

as they are, produce that glow of the heart which warms a good man

to “acts of kindness and of love,” as little, as nameless, and as

unremembered as the feelings out of which they spring.

Nameless as they are, our poet does not hesitate to rank these trifling

acts as the “best portion of a good man’s life.” But it is only out

of the good man’s heart that these good issues come, because, as we

have said, the feelings are not in themselves moral, they act upon

that which is there, and the point brought before us is, that the

influence of the feelings is equally powerful and indirect. Why should

the recollection of Tintern Abbey cause a good man to do some little

kind thing? We can only give the ultimate answer that “God has made us

so,” that a feeling of even unremembered pleasure prompts the good man

to give forth out of the good treasure of his heart in kindness and in

love. We have but to think of the outcome of feelings at the negative

pole to convince us of the nice exactitude of the poet’s psychology. We

are not exactly displeased, but unpleased, dull, not quickened by any

feeling of pleasure: let us ask ourselves if, in this condition of our

feelings, we are prompted to any outpouring of love and kindness upon

our neighbours.

Here is another aspect of the feelings of very great importance to us

who have the education of children.

“I do not like you, Doctor Fell,

The reason why I cannot tell,”

is a feeling we all know well enough, and is, in fact, that intuitive

perception of character--one of our finest feelings and best guides

in life--which is too apt to be hammered out of us by the constant

effort to beat down our sensibilities to the explicit and definite.

One wonders why people complain of faithless friends, untrustworthy

servants, and disappointed affections. If the feelings were retained

in truth and simplicity, there is little doubt that they would afford

for each of us such a touchstone of character in the persons we come in

contact with, that we should be saved from making exigeant demands on

the one hand, and from suffering disappointment on the other.

The public orator plays, by preference, upon the gamut of the

feelings. He throws in arguments by the way; brightens his discourse

with graphic word-picture, metaphor, simile; but for his final effect

he relies upon the impression he has been able to make upon the

feelings of his audience, and the event proves him to be right.

Not only our little nameless acts but the great purposes of our lives

arise out of our feelings. Enthusiasm itself is not thought, though it

arises when we are

“Stung with the rapture of a sudden thought;”

it is a glowing, malleable condition of the forces of our nature,

during which all things are possible to us, and we only wait for a

lead. Enthusiasm in its earliest stage is inconsequent, incoherent,

devoid of purpose, and yet is the state out of which all the great

purposes of life shape themselves. We feel, we think, we say, we do;

this is the genesis of most of our activities.

But our feelings, as our thoughts, depend upon what we are; we feel in

all things as “’tis our nature to,” and the point to be noticed is that

our feelings are educable, and that in educating the feelings we modify

the character. A pressing danger of our day is that the delicate task

of educating shall be exchanged for the much simpler one of blunting

the feelings. This is the almost inevitable result of a system where

training is given _en masse_; but not the necessary result, because the

tone of feeling of a head-master or mistress is almost with certainty

conveyed, more or less, to a whole school. Still, perhaps, the perfect

bloom of the feelings can only be preserved under quite judicious

individual culture, and, therefore, necessarily devolves upon parents.

The instrument to be employed in this culture is always the same--the

blessed sixth sense of Tact. It is possible to call up the feeling

one desires by a look, a gesture; to dissipate it entirely by the

rudeness of a spoken word. Our silence, our sympathy, our perception

give place and play to fit feelings, and equally discourage, and cause

to slink away ashamed the feeling which should not have place. But let

us beware of words; let us use our eyes and our imagination in dealing

with the young; let us see what they are feeling and help them by the

flow of our responsive feeling. But words, even words of praise and

tenderness, touch this delicate bloom of nature as with a hot finger,

and behold! it is gone. Let us consider carefully what feelings we wish

to stimulate, and what feelings we wish to repress in our children,

and then, having made up our minds, let us say nothing. We all know

the shrinking, as of a sore place, with which children receive some

well-meant word from a tactless friend.

The sense of spiritual touch is our only guide in this region of the

feelings, but with this alone we may tune the spirits of the children

to great issues, believing that they are capable of all things great.

We wish them to revere. Now reverence is a feeling before it becomes a

thought or an act, and it is a communicable feeling, but communicable

like the light of a torch only by contact. The sentiment of reverence

fills our own souls when we see a bird on its nest, an old man at his

cottage door, a church in which have centred the aspirations of a

village for many an age; we feel and the children feel our feeling,

and they feel too: a feeling is communicated by sympathy, but perhaps

in no other way. The ignoble habit of depreciation is in the first

place a feeling. It is quite easy to put the children into that

other attitude of feeling called forth by the fitness and goodness of

the thing regarded, and we all know that it is easy to appreciate or

depreciate the same thing. These two feelings alone illustrate the

importance of the delicate culture we have in view, for among the

minor notes of character none tend more to differentiate persons than

this of perceiving cause of satisfaction in an object or a person, or

of perceiving cause of dissatisfaction in the same object or person.

An appreciative habit of feeling is a cause of tranquil joy to its

possessor, and of ease and contentment to the people connected with

him. A depreciative habit, on the contrary, though it affords a little

pleasurable excitement because it ministers to the vanity of the _ego_

(I dislike this person or this thing, therefore I know better or am

better than others), disturbs tranquillity and puts the person out of

harmony with himself and with his surroundings; no stable joy comes

of depreciation. But even in dealing with feelings of this class we

must remember that tact, sympathy and communicable feeling are our

only implements; the feelings are not thoughts to be reasoned down;

they are neither moral nor immoral to challenge our praise or our

blame; we cannot be too reticent in our dealings with them in children,

nor too watchfully aware that the least inadvertence may bruise some

tender blossom of feeling. This is the risk which attends the habit of

persiflage and banter in family talk; a little is thoroughly good and

wholesome, but this kind of play should be used with very great tact,

especially by the elders. Children understand each other so well that

there is far less risk of hurt feelings from the tormenting schoolboy

than from the more considerate elder.

There is only one case in which the feelings may not have free play,

and that is when they reflect the consciousness of the _ego_. What

are commonly called sensitive feelings--that is, susceptibility for

oneself and about oneself, readiness to perceive neglect or slight,

condemnation or approbation--though belonging to a fine and delicate

character, are in themselves of less worthy order, and require very

careful direction lest morbid conditions should be set up. To ignore

wisely is an art, and the girl who craves to know what you thought of

her when she said this or did the other, need not be told brutally

that you did not think of her at all; it is quite enough for her to

perceive that your regard is fixed upon something impersonal both

to her and you; she takes the hint and looks away from herself, and

nothing is said to cause her pain. It appears to be an immutable law

that our feelings, as our sensations, must find their occupation in

things without; the moment they are turned in upon themselves harm is

done. The task of dealing with the susceptibilities of young people is

one of the most delicate that falls to us elders, whether we be parents

or friends. Undiscriminating sympathy is very perilous, and bluntness

of perception is very damaging; we are between Scylla and Charybdis,

and must needs walk humbly and warily in this delicate work of dealing

with the feelings of children and young people. Our only safeguard is

to cherish in ourselves “the soft, meek, tender soul,” sensitive to

the touch of God, and able to deal in soft, meek, tender ways with

children, beings of fine and delicate mould as they are.

CHAPTER XIX

“_WHAT IS TRUTH?_”

It is said that we English are no longer to be characterised as a

truth-speaking people. This is a distressing charge, and yet we cannot

put it away from us with a high hand. Possibly we are in a stage

of civilisation which does not tend to produce the fine courage of

absolute truthfulness. He who is without fear is commonly without

falsehood; and a nation brought up amid the chivalries of war dares

to be true. But we live in times of peace: we are no longer called

on to defend the truth of our word by the strength of our hand. We

speak with very little sense of responsibility, because no one calls

us to account; and, so far as we are truth-tellers, we are so out of

pure truth of heart and uprightness of life. That is, we may be, as a

nation, losing the habit of truth to which the nation’s childhood was

trained, in ways however rough and ready; but we are growing up, and

the truth that is among us is perhaps of a higher quality than the

more general truthfulness of earlier days. Now, truth is indeed the

white flower of a blameless life, and not the mere result of a fearless

habit. The work before us is to bring up our children to this higher

manner of truth. We no longer treat this or that particular lie or

bit of deceit as a local ailment, for which we have only to apply the

proper lotion or plaster; we treat it as symptomatic, as denoting a

radical defect of character which we set ourselves to correct.

Opinion without knowledge, says Darwin, has no value, and to treat

the tendency to untruthfulness that children often show, one should

have a good deal of knowledge of a special kind. To treat a child _de

novo_, place him under a moral microscope, record our observations,

and formulate opinions based upon that child, and as many more as we

can get into focus, is, no doubt, useful and important work. But it is

work for which we must qualify ourselves. The child is a human being,

immature, but yet, perhaps, a human being at his best. Who amongst

us has such gifts of seeing, knowing, comprehending, imagining, such

capacities for loving, giving, believing, as the little child in the

midst! We have no higher praise for our wisest and best than that they

are fresh and keen as little children in their interests and loves.

Now, we maintain that it is not sufficient to bring unaided common

sense and good intentions to this most delicate art of child-study. We

cannot afford to discard the wisdom of the past and begin anew with the

effort to collect and systematise, hoping to accomplish as much and

more in our short span than the centuries have brought us.

In this matter of lying, for example, unaided common sense is likely

to start upon one of two theses: either the child is born true, and

you must keep him so; or, the child is born false, and you must cure

him of it. Popular opinion leans strongly to the first theory in these

days; and, as we perceive only that which we believe, the tendency

is, perhaps, to take the absolute truthfulness and honour of children

a little too much for granted. If you would have children true, you

must, of course, treat them as if they were true, and believe them

to be true. But, all the same, wisdom may not play the ostrich. In

the last generation, people accepted their children as born false,

and, what more likely to make them so than this foregone conclusion?

Possibly some falling off in truthfulness in our day is traceable to

the dogmatic teaching upon which our forbears were brought up.

The wisdom of the ages--_i.e._, philosophy, and the science of the

present, especially physiology, and more particularly what we may call

psycho-physiology--show us that both these positions are wrong, and

that all theories founded upon either position, or upon any midway

point between the two, must needs be wrong too. A child is born neither

true nor false. He is absolutely without either virtue or vice when

he comes into the world. He has tendencies, indeed, but these are no

more either virtuous or vicious than is the colour of his eyes. Even

the child of a liar is not necessarily born a liar, because, we are

assured, acquired tendencies are not transmitted. But there is this

to be said. The child born of a family which has from generation to

generation been in a subject position may have less predisposition

to truthfulness than the child of a family which has belonged for

generations to the ruling class. As in the natural world all substances

must be reduced to their elements before they can be chemically dealt

with, so in the moral world, if we wish to treat an offence, it is best

to trace it to that elemental property of human nature of which it is

the probable outcome. Now, lying, even in its worst forms, is by no

means elemental. Ambition is elemental, avarice, vanity, gratitude,

love and hate. But lying arises from secondary causes. The treatment is

all the more difficult. It is no longer a case of--the child has lied,

punish him; but, where is the weak place in his character, or what is

the defect in his education, which has induced this lying habit, if it

be a habit? How shall we, not punish the lie, but treat the failing

of which it is symptomatic. From this point of view let us consider

the extremely interesting classification of lies presented to us by an

American educationalist.[15]

I. _Pseudophobia._ Janet _thinks_ she _may_ have glanced at Mary’s

slate, and seen the answer to her sum. A comparison of the two slates

shows that she has not done so, and that Janet, in the effort to

save herself from a lie, has actually told one. This sort of morbid

conscientiousness is Argus-eyed for other forms of sin. We knew a

sick girl of fourteen, who was terribly unhappy because she was not

able to kneel up in bed when she said her prayers. Was this the

“unpardonable sin”? she asked, in unaffected terror. We agree with

the writer in question, as to the frequent occurrence of this form

of distress, and also in tracing it, not to moral, but to physical

causes. We should say, too, it is more common in girls than in boys,

and in the home-taught than in the school-taught child. Healthy

interests, out-of-door life, engrossing and delightful handiworks,

general occupation with things rather than with thoughts, and avoidance

of any word or hint that may lead to self-consciousness or the habit

of introspection, will probably do much to carry the young sufferer

through a difficult stage of life.

II. _The Lie Heroic._ The lie heroic is, _par excellence_, the

schoolboy’s lie, and has its rise, not in any love for lying, but in a

want of moral balance; that is to say, the boy has been left to form

his own code of ethics.

Who spilled the ink? little Tom Brown is asked. “I did,” he says;

because Jack Spender, the real culprit, is his particular hero at the

moment. Faithfulness to a friend is a far higher virtue in Tom’s eyes

than mere barren truthfulness. And how is Tom to know, if he has not

been taught, that it is unlawful to cherish one virtue at the expense

of another. Considering how little clear, definite, authoritative

teaching children receive on ethical questions, the wonder is that most

persons do elaborate some kind of moral code, or code of honour, for

themselves.

III. _Truth for friends, lies for enemies._ A lie under this head

differs from the lie heroic chiefly in that it need not bring any risk

to the speaker. This class of lies again points to the moral ignorance

which we are slow to recognise in children because we confound

innocence with virtue. It is quite natural for a child to believe that

truth is relative, and not absolute, and that whether a lie is a lie

or not depends on whom you are speaking to. The children are in the

position of “jesting Pilate.” What is truth? they unconsciously ask.

IV. _Lies inspired by selfishness._ This is a form of lying for which

superficial treatment is quite idle. The lie and the vice of which it

is the instrument are so allied that those two cannot be put asunder.

Professor Stanley Hall well points out that school is a fertile field

for this kind of lying. But it is the selfishness and not the lying

that must be dealt with. Cure the first, and the second disappears,

having no further _raison d’être_. How? This is a hard question.

Nothing but a strong impulse to the heroism of unselfishness,

initiated and sustained by the grace of God, will deliver boy or girl

from the vice of selfishness of which lying is the ready handmaid. But

let us not despair; _every_ boy and girl is open to such impulse, is

capable of heroic effort. Prayer and patience, and watchfulness for

opportunities to convey the stimulating suggestion--these will not be

in vain. _Every_ boy and girl is a hero _in posse_. There is no worse

infidelity than that which gives up the hope of mending any flaw of

character, however bad, in a young creature. All the same, happy those

parents who have not allowed selfishness and virtue (whether in the

form of truthfulness, or under some other name), to come to hand to

hand conflict. It is easy to give direction to the tendencies of a

child; it is agonisingly difficult to alter the set of character in a

man.

V. _The Deception of imagination and play._ I passed little Muriel in

the park one day; the child was not looking; her companion was unknown

to me. I was engaged with my companion, and believed that Muriel had

not noticed me. The little girl went home and told her mother that I

had kissed her and asked various questions about the family health.

What could be the child’s motive? She had none. Her active imagination

rehearsed the little dialogue which most naturally would have taken

place; and this was so real to her that it obscured the fact. The

reality, the truth, to Muriel, was what she imagined had taken place.

She had probably no recollection whatever of the actual facts. This

sort of failure in verbal truthfulness is excessively common in

imaginative children, and calls for prompt attention and treatment;

but not on the lines a hasty and righteous parent might be inclined

to adopt. Here is no call for moral indignation. The parents and not

the child are in fault. The probability is that the child’s ravenous

imagination is not duly and daily supplied with its proper meat, of

fairy tale in early days, of romance, later. Let us believe of the

children that “trailing clouds of glory do they come” from the place

where all things are possible, where any delightful thing may happen.

Let us believe that our miserable limitations of time and space and

the laws of matter irk them inconceivably, imprison the free soul as

a wild bird in a cage. If we refuse to give the child outlets into

the realms of fancy, where everything is possible, the delicate Ariel

of his imagination will still work within our narrow limits upon our

poor tasks, and every bit of our narrow living is played over with a

thousand variations, apt to be more vivid and interesting than the poor

facts, and, therefore, more likely to remain with the child as the

facts which he will produce when required to speak the truth. What is

the cure? Give the child free entrance into, abundant joyous living in,

the kingdom of make-believe. Let him people every glen with fairies,

every island with Crusoes. Let him gift every bird and beast with human

interests, which he will share when the dear fairy godmother arrives

with an introduction. Let us be glad and rejoice that all things are

possible to the children, recognising in this condition of theirs their

fitness to receive and believe and understand, as, alas! we cannot do,

the things of the Kingdom of God. The age of faith is a great sowing

time, doubtless designed, in the Divine scheme of things, especially

that parents may make their children at home in the things of the

Spirit before contact with the world shall have materialised them.

At the same time the more imaginative the child, the more essential is

it that the boundaries of the kingdom of make-believe should be clearly

defined, and exact truthfulness insisted upon in all that concerns

the narrower world where the grown-ups live. It is simply a matter

of careful education; daily lessons in exact statement, without any

horror or righteous indignation about misstatements, but warm, loving

encouragement to the child who gives a long message quite accurately,

who tells you just what Miss Brown said and no more, just what happened

at Harry’s party, without any garnish. Every day affords scope for a

dozen little lessons at least, and, gradually, the more severe beauty

of truth will dawn upon the child whose soul is already possessed by

the grace of fiction.

VI. _Pseudomania._ We have little to say on this score, except to

counsel parents to keep watch at the place of the letting out of

waters. No doubt the condition is pathological, and calls for curative

treatment rather than punishment. But we believe it is a condition

which never need be set up. The girl who has been able to win esteem

for what she really is and really does, is not tempted to “pose,”

and the boy who has found full outlet for his energies, physical and

mental, has no part of himself left to spend upon “humbugging.” This

is one of the cases which show how important it is for parents to

acquaint themselves with that delicate borderland of human nature which

touches the material and the spiritual. How spiritual thought and

material brain interact; how brain and nerves are inter-dependent; how

fresh air and wholesome food affect the condition of the blood which

nourishes the nerves; how the nerves again may bear tyrannous sway over

all that we include under “bodily health;” these are matters that the

parent should know who would avoid the possibility of the degradation

described as Pseudomania from being set up in any one of his children.

It is as well that those who have to do with young people should

be familiar with one or two marked signs of this mentally diseased

condition; as, the furtive glance from under half-closed lids, shot up

to see how you are taking it all; the flowing recital, accompanied by a

slightly absent pre-occupied look, which denotes that the speaker is in

the act of inventing the facts he relates.

We have not space to enlarge upon _palliatives_, _lies of terror_,

or one or two more classes of lies, which seem to us of frequent

occurrence, as _lies of display_ (boasting), _lies of carelessness_

(inaccuracy), and, worst of all, _lies of malice_ (false witness).

We would only commend the subject to the attention of parents;

for, though one child may have more aptitude than another, neither

truthfulness nor the multiplication table come by nature. The child who

appears to be perfectly truthful is so because he has been carefully

trained to truthfulness, however indirectly and unconsciously. It is

more important to cultivate the habit of truth than to deal with the

accident of lying.

Moral teaching must be as simple, direct and definite as the teaching

which appeals to the intellect; presented with religious sanctions,

quickened by religious impulses, but not limited to the prohibitions of

the law nor to the penalties which overtake the transgressor.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Professor G. Stanley Hall, in an article which

appeared in the _American Journal of Psychology_, Jan.

1891.

CHAPTER XX

_SHOW CAUSE WHY_

We have been asking, WHY? like Mr. Ward Fowler’s Wagtail, for a long

time. We asked, Why? about linen underclothing, and behold it is

discarded. We asked Why? about numberless petticoats, and they are

going. We are asking Why? about carpets and easy chairs, and all

manner of luxurious living; and probably the year 1900 will see of

these things only the survivals. It is well we should go about with

this practical Why? rather than with the “Why does a wagtail wag its

tail?” manner of problem. The latter issues in vain guesses, and the

pseudo-knowledge which puffeth up. But if, Why? leads us to--“Because

we should not; then, let us do the thing we should.”--This manner of

Why? is like a poker to a dying fire.

Why is Tom Jones sent to school? That he may be educated, of course,

say his parents. And Tom is dismissed with the fervent hope that he may

take a good place. But never a word about the delights of learning, or

of the glorious worlds of nature and of thought to which his school

studies will presumably prove an open sesame. “Mind you be a good

boy and get a good place in your class,” is Tom’s valediction; and

his little soul quickens with purpose. He won’t disappoint father,

and mother shall be proud of him. He’ll be the top boy in his class.

Why, he’ll be the top boy in the whole school, and get prizes and

things, and won’t that be jolly! Tommy says nothing of this, but his

mother sees it in his eyes and blesses the manly little fellow. So

Tommy goes to school, happy boy, freighted with his father’s hopes and

his mother’s blessings. By-and-by comes a report, the main delight

of which is, that Tommy has gained six places; more places gained,

prizes, removes--by-and-by scholarships. Before he is twelve, Tommy is

able to earn the whole of his future schooling by his skill in that

industry of the young popularly known as _Exams_. Now he aims at larger

game; “exams” still, but “exams” big with possibilities, “exams” which

will carry him through his University career. His success is pretty

certain, because you get into the trick of “exams” as of other crafts.

His parents are congratulated, Tom is more or less of a hero in his

own eyes and in those of his compeers. Examinations for ever! Hip,

hip! Never was a more facile way for a youth to distinguish himself,

that is, if his parents have sent him into the world blessed with any

inheritance of brains. For the boy not so blessed--why, he may go to

the Colonies and that will make a man of him.

The girls come in a close second. The “Junior,” the “Senior,” the

“Higher,” the “Intermediate,” the “B.A.,” and what else you will, mark

the epochs in most girls’ lives. Better, say you, than having no epochs

at all. Unquestionably, yes. But the fact that a successful examination

of one sort or another is the goal towards which most of our young

people are labouring, with feverish haste and with undue anxiety, is

one which possibly calls for the scrutiny of the investigating Why?

In the first place, people rarely accomplish beyond their own aims.

The aim is a pass, not knowledge, “they cram to pass and not to know;

they do pass and they don’t know,” says Mr. Ruskin; and most of us

who know the “candidate” will admit that there is some truth in the

epigram. There are, doubtless, people who pass and who also know, but,

even so, it is open to question, whether passing is the most direct,

simple, natural and efficacious way of securing knowledge, or whether

the persons who pass _and_ know are not those keen and original minds

which would get blood out of stone,--anyway, sap out of sawdust.

Again--except for the fine power of resistance possessed by the human

mind, which secures that most persons who go through examination grind

come out as they went in, absolutely unbiassed towards any intellectual

pursuits whatever--except for this, the tendency of the grind is to

imperil that individuality which is the one incomparably precious

birthright of each of us. The very fact of a public examination compels

that all who go in for it must study on the same lines.

It will be urged that there is no necessary limitation to studies

outside the examination syllabus, nor any restrictions whatever as to

the direction of study even upon the syllabus; but this is a mistake.

Whatever public examinations a given school takes, the whole momentum

of pupils and staff urges towards the great issue. As to the manner of

study, this is ruled by the style of questions set in a given subject;

and Dry-as-dust wins the day because it is easier and fairer to give

marks upon definite facts than upon mere ebullitions of fancy or

genius. So it comes to pass that there is absolutely no choice as to

the matter or manner of their studies for most boys and girls who go to

school, nor, for many of those who work at home. For, so great is the

convenience of a set syllabus that parents and teachers are glad to

avail themselves of it.

It appears then that the boy is in bondage to the schoolmaster, and

the schoolmaster to the examiner, and the parents do no more than

acquiesce. Would parents be astounded if they found themselves in this

matter a little like the man who had talked prose all his life without

knowing it? The tyranny of the competitive examination is supported

for the most part by parents. We do not say altogether. Teachers do

their part manfully; but, in the first place, teachers unsupported by

parents have no power at all in the matter; not a single candidate

could they present beyond their own sons and daughters; in the next

place, we do not hesitate to say that the whole system is forced upon

teachers (though, perhaps, by no means against their will) by certain

ugly qualities of human nature as manifested in parents. Ignorance,

idleness, vanity, avarice, do not carry a pleasant sound; and if we,

who believe in parents, have the temerity to suggest such shadows to

the father basking in the sunshine of his boy’s success, we would add

that the rest of us who are not parents are still more to blame; that

it is terribly hard to run counter to the current of the hour; and

that, “harm is wrought through want of thought.”

Ignorance is excusable, but wilful ignorance is culpable, and the

time has come for the thoughtful parent to examine himself and see

whether or no it be his duty to make a stand against the competitive

examination system. Observe, the evil lies in the competition, not

in the examination. If the old axiom be true, that the mind can know

nothing but what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question

put by the mind itself, it is relatively true that knowledge conveyed

from without must needs be tested from without. Probably, work on a

given syllabus tested by a final examination is _the_ condition of

definite knowledge and steady progress. All we contend for is that

the examination shall not be competitive. It will be urged that it

is unfair to rank such public examinations as the Universities’

Local--which have done infinitely much to raise the standard of

middle-class education, especially amongst girls, and upon which

neither prize nor place depends--as competitive examinations. They

are rarely competitive, it is true, in the sense of any extraneous

reward to the fortunate candidate; but, happily, we are not so far gone

from original righteousness but that Distinction is its own reward.

The pupil is willing to labour, and rightly so, for the honour of a

pass which distinguishes him among the _élite_ of his school. The

schools themselves compete (_con_ + _petere_ = to seek with) as to

which shall send in the greatest number of candidates and come out

with the greatest number of Honours, Scholarships, and what not. These

distinctions are well advertised, and the parent who is on the look-out

for a school for his boy is all too ready to send him where the chances

of distinction are greatest. Examinations which include the whole

school, and where every boy has his place on the list, higher or lower,

are another thing; though these also appeal to the emulous principle,

they do not do so in excess, the point to be noted.

But, why should so useful an incentive to work as a competitive

examination be called in question? There are certain facts which may be

predicated of every human being who is not, as the country folk say,

“wanting.” Every one wants to get on; whatever place we occupy we aim

at the next above it. Every one wants to get rich, or, anyway, richer;

whether the wealth he chooses to acquire be money or autographs. Every

one wants the society of his fellows; if he does not, we call him a

misanthrope and say, to use another popular and telling phrase, “He’s

not quite right.” We all want to excel, to do better than the rest,

whether in a tennis-match or an examination. We all want to know,

though some of us are content to know our neighbours’ affairs, while

others would fain know about the stars in their courses. We all, from

the sergeant in his stripes to the much decorated commanding officer,

want people to think well of us. Now these several desires, of power,

of wealth, of society, of excelling, of knowledge, of esteem, are

primary springs of action in every human being. Touch any one of them,

in savage or in _savant_, and you cannot fail of a response. The

Russian Moujik besieges a passing traveller with questions about the

lands he has seen, because he _wants to know_. The small boy gambles

with his marbles because he _wants to get_. The dairymaid dons a new

bow because she _wants to be admired_, the only form of esteem to which

she is awake. Tom drives when the children play horses because he

_wants to rule_. Maud works herself into a fever for her examination

because she _wants to excel_, and “to pass” is the hallmark of

excellence, that is, of those who excel.

Now these primary desires are neither virtuous nor vicious. They are

common to us all and necessary to us all, and appear to play the same

part towards our spiritual being that the appetites do to our material

existence; that is, they stimulate us to the constant effort which

is the condition of progress, and at the same time the condition of

health. We know how that soul stagnates which thinks nothing worth an

effort. He is a poor thing who is content to be beaten on all hands.

We do not quarrel with the principle of emulation, any more than we do

with that of respiration. The one is as natural and as necessary as the

other, and as little to be brought before a moral tribunal. But it is

the part of the educator to recognise that a child does not come into

the world a harp with one string; and that the perpetual play upon this

one chord through all the years of adolescence is an evil, not because

emulation is a vicious principle, but because the balance of character

is destroyed by the constant stimulation of this one desire at the

expense of the rest.

Equally strong, equally natural, equally sure of awakening a responsive

stir in the young soul, is the divinely implanted principle of

curiosity. The child _wants to know_: wants to know incessantly,

desperately; asks all manner of questions about everything he comes

across, plagues his elders and betters, and is told not to bother, and

to be a good boy and not ask questions. But this only sometimes. For

the most part we lay ourselves out to answer Tommy’s questions so far

as we are able, and are sadly ashamed that we are so soon floored by

his insatiable curiosity about natural objects and phenomena. Tommy has

his reward. The most surprising educational feat accomplished amongst

us is the amount of knowledge, about everything within his range, which

Tommy has acquired by the end of his sixth year. “Why, he knows as much

as I do, about”--this, and that, and the other, says his astonished

and admiring father. Take him to the seaside, and in a week he will

tell you all about trawling and mackerel fishing; the ways of the

fisher-folk, and all that his inquisitive mind can find out unaided.

He would tell all about sand, and shells, and tides, and waves, only,

poor little boy, he must have help towards this manner of knowledge,

and there is no one to give it to him. However, he finds out all that

he can about all that he sees and hears, and does amass a surprising

amount of exact knowledge about things and their properties.

When Tommy goes to school, his parents find themselves relieved of the

inconvenience of his incessant Why? They are probably so well pleased

to be let off that it does not occur to them to ask themselves Why

Tommy no longer wonders Why? Up to this period nature has been active.

She has been allowed to stimulate that one of his desires most proper

to minister to his mental growth, just as, if let alone, she would give

him that hearty appetite which should promote his physical growth.

She has it all her own way. The desire of knowledge is that spring of

action most operative in Tommy’s childhood. But he goes to school.

Knowledge is a pure delight to Tommy. Let his lessons approach him on

the lines of his nature--not on the lines proper for certain subjects

of instruction--and the little boy has no choice. He cannot help

learning and loving to learn, “‘cos ’tis his nature to.”

This, of presenting knowledge to Tommy on the lines of his nature, is,

however, a difficult and delicate task. Not every schoolmaster, any

more than every parent, is keen to give Tommy what he wants in this

matter of needful knowledge. So, once upon a time, let us suppose,

there arose a pedagogue to whom was discovered a new and easier way.

The morning had seen the poor man badly baffled by the queries of

boys who _wanted to know_. How was a man, who had pretty well done

with fresh studies for his own part, to keep up with these eager

intelligences. In a vision of the night it is disclosed to Cognitus

that there is another and an easier way. The desire of knowledge is not

the only desire active in the young bosom. Just as much as he wants to

know, he wants to excel, to do better than the rest. “Every soul of

them wants to be first in one way or another--first in games, if not

in class.” Now, Cognitus was a philosopher; he knew that, as a rule,

but one desire is supremely active at one time in the breast of boy

or man. Kindle their emulation, and all must needs do the same thing

in the same way to see who can do it best. The boys will no longer

_want to know_; they will get their due share of learning in regular

ways, and really get on better than if they were moved by the restless

spirit of inquiry. _Eureka!_ A discovery; honour and renown for master

and boys,--no need for cane or imposition, for emulation is the best

of all disciplinarians,--and steady-going, quiet work, without any

of the fatiguing excursions into new fields to which the craving for

knowledge leads. “How pleased the parents will be, too,” says Cognitus,

for he knows that paternal love, now and then, looks for a little

sustenance from paternal vanity, that the child who does well is dear.

Nay, who knows but the far-seeing Cognitus beheld, as in a vision, the

scholarships and money awards which should help to fill the pocket of

Paternus, or should, any way, lessen the drain thereupon. Here, indeed,

is a better way, upon which Paternus and Cognitus may well consent to

walk together. Every one is happy, every one content, nobody worried,

a great deal of learning got in. What would you have more? Just one

thing, honoured Cognitus, that keen desire for knowledge, that same

incessant Why? with which Tommy went to school, and which should

have kept him inquisitive about all things good and great and wise

throughout the years given to him wherein to lay the groundwork of

character, the years of his youth.

We cannot put our finger upon Cognitus, and are pretty sure that he

arrived by a consensus of opinion, and through considerable urgency

on the part of parents. No one is to blame for a condition of things

which is an enormous advance upon much of what went before. Only,

knowledge is advancing, and it is full time that we reconsider our

educational principles and recast our methods. We absolutely must get

rid of the competitive examination system if we would not be reduced to

the appalling mediocrity which we see in China, for example, to have

befallen an examination-ridden empire. Probably the world has never

seen a finer body of educationalists than those who at the present

moment man our schools, both Boys’ and Girls’. But the originality,

the fine initiative, of these most able men and women is practically

lost. The schools are examination-ridden, and the heads can strike out

no important new lines. Let us begin our efforts by believing in one

another, parents in teachers and teachers in parents. Both parents and

teachers have the one desire, the advance of the child along the lines

of character. Both groan equally under the limitations of the present

system. Let us have courage, and united and concerted action will

overthrow this Juggernaut that we have made.

CHAPTER XXI

_HERBARTIAN PEDAGOGICS_

We in England require, every now and then, to pull ourselves

together, and to ask what they are doing on the continent in the way

of education. We still hark back to the older German educational

reformers. We may not know much of Comenius, Basedow, Ratich; we

do know something of the reformers next in descent, Pestalozzi and

Froebel; but how much do we know of the thought of Johann Friedrich

Herbart, the lineal successor of these, who has largely displaced his

predecessors in the field of Pedagogics.

How entirely German educators work upon Herbart, and Herbart only, is

proved by the existence of a Herbartian educational literature greatly

more extensive than the whole of our English educational literature put

together.

A little volume on the “Outlines of Pedagogics,”[16] by Professor W.

Rein, of the University of Jena, is offered to us by the translators,

C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew, as a brief introduction to the study of

Herbart and his school, the author making due allowance for the

advances that have been made in the fifty years that have elapsed since

Herbart’s death.

As Herbart and his interpreters represent the most advanced school of

educational thought on the continent, it will, perhaps, be interesting

to our readers to make a slight comparison between what we call

_P.N.E.U. Philosophy_ and the school of thought which exercises such

immense influence in Germany.

One of the most characteristic features of Herbart’s thinking, and

that feature of it which constitutes a new school of educational

thought, is, that he rejects the notion of separate mental faculties.

The earlier reformers, notably Pestalozzi and Froebel, divide the

faculties up with something of the precision of a phrenologist, and

a chief business of education is, according to them, “to develop the

faculties.” There is a certain pleasing neatness in this idea which

is very attractive. We want to know, definitely, what we have to do.

Why develop the perceptive faculties here, the conceptive there, the

judgment in this lesson, the affections in the other, until you have

covered the whole ground, giving each so-called faculty its due share

of developmental exercise! But, says Herbart, we have changed all that.

The mind, like Wordsworth’s cloud, moves altogether when it moves at

all.

Now this appears to be but a slight fundamental difference, but it

is one upon the recognition of which education changes front. The

whole system of beautifully organised lessons, whose object is to

develop this or that, is called into question. For the _raison d’être_

of specialised intellectual gymnastics is gone when we no longer

recognise particular “muscles” of the mind to be developed. The aim

of education must be something quite other, and, if the aim is other,

the methods must be altered, for what is method but _a way to an

end_. So far we are entirely with Herbart; we do not believe in the

“faculties;” therefore we do not believe in the “development of the

faculties;” therefore we do not regard lessons as instruments for this

“development”: in fact, our whole method of procedure is altered.

Again, we are with the philosopher in his recognition of the force of

an idea, and especially of those ideas which are, as we phrase it,

in the air at any given moment. “Both the circle of the family and

that of social intercourse are subjected to forces that are active in

the entire social body, and that penetrate the entire atmosphere of

human life in invisible channels. No one knows whence these currents,

these ideas arise; but they are there. They influence the moods, the

aspirations, and the inclinations of humanity, and no one however

powerful can withdraw himself from their effects; no sovereign’s

command makes its way into their depths. They are often born of a

genius to be seized upon by the multitude that soon forgets their

author; then the power of the thought that has thus become active

in the masses again impels the individual to energetic resolutions:

in this manner it is constantly describing a remarkable circle.

Originating with those that are highly gifted, these thoughts permeate

all society, reaching, in fact, not only its adult members, but also

through these its youth, and appearing again in other highly gifted

individuals in whom they will perhaps have been elevated to a definite

form.

“Whether the power of these dominant ideas is greater in the

individual, or in the body of individuals as a whole, is a matter

of indifference here. Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that

their effect upon the one is manifested in a reciprocal action upon

the other, and that their influence upon the younger generation is

indisputable.”

We entirely agree that no one can escape the influence of this

Zeitgeist, and that the Zeitgeist is, in fact, one of the most

powerful of the occult educational influences, and one which parents

and all who have the training of children will do well to reckon with

in the adjustment of their work.

Nature, family, social intercourse, this Zeitgeist, the Church and

the State, thus Professor Rein, as interpreting Herbart, sums up the

schoolmasters under whose influences every child grows up; a suggestive

enumeration we should do well to consider. “_Erziehung ist Sache

der Familien; von da geht sie aus und dahin kehrt sie grössenteils

zurück_,” says Herbart. He considers, as do we, that by far the most

valuable part of education is carried on in the family, because of the

union of all the members under a common parentage, of the feeling of

dependence upon a head, of the very intimate knowledge to be gained of

the younger members.

“The members of the family look confidently to the head; and this

sense of dependence favours, at the same time, the proper reception

of that which is dearest to mankind, namely, the religious feeling.

If the life of the family is permeated by a noble piety, a sincere

religious faith will take root in the hearts of the children. Faithful

devotion to the guide of the youth also calls forth faithful devotion

to Him who controls human destinies--a thought which Herbart expresses

so beautifully in the words--‘To the child, the family should be the

symbol of the order in the world; from the parents one should derive by

idealisation the characteristics of the deity.’”

This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation

to Almighty God is one which we of the P.N.E.U. have ever laboured to

enforce. We take a very distinct stand upon this point. We do not

merely give a _religious_ education, because that would seem to imply

the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for

example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good

gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy

Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination

of all education (which may, at the same time, be reached by a little

child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with the Supreme,

in which our being finds its fullest perfection. We hold, in fact,

that noble conception of education held by the mediæval church, as

pictured upon the walls of the Spanish chapel in Florence. Here we have

represented the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Twelve, and directly

under them, fully under the illuminating rays, are the noble figures

of the seven liberal arts, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Music, Astronomy,

Geometry, Arithmetic, and under these again the men who received

and expressed, so far as we know, the initial idea in each of these

subjects; such men as Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Euclid, whom we might call

pagans, but whom the earlier Church recognised as divinely taught and

illuminated.

Here follows a passage which we do more than endorse, for it contains

the very _raison d’être_ of our society. “The education of the children

will always remain the holiest and highest of all family duties. The

welfare, civilisation, and culture of a people depend essentially

upon the degree of success that attends the education in the homes.

The family principle is the point at which both the religious and

educational life of a people centres, and about which it revolves. It

is a force in comparison with which every sovereign’s command appears

powerless.”

By the way, we are inclined to think that Dr. Rein’s mention of

Rousseau is a little misleading. It is true that in “Emil” the parents

are supplanted, but, notwithstanding that fact, perhaps no other

educationalist has done so much to awaken parents to their great work

as educators. After investigating the conditions of home training,

Dr. Rein proceeds to a discussion of schools (_a_) as they exist in

Germany--(_b_) as they exist in his own ideal, a discussion which

should be most interesting to parents.

Teleology, _i.e._, the theory of the purpose of education, falls next

under discussion in an extremely instructive chapter. It is well we

should know the vast uncertainty which exists on this fundamental

point. As a matter of fact, few of us know definitely what we propose

to ourselves in the education of our children. We do not know what it

is possible to effect, and, as a man does not usually compass more

than he aims at, the results of our education are very inadequate and

unsatisfactory.

“Shall the educator follow Rousseau and educate a man of nature in the

midst of civilised men? In so doing, as Herbart has shown, we should

simply repeat from the beginning the entire series of evils that have

already been surmounted. Or shall we turn to Locke and prepare the

pupil for the world which is customarily in league with worldlings? We

should then arrive at the standpoint of Basedow, and aim to educate the

pupil so that he would become a truly useful member of human society.

Of course we should always be harassed with the secret doubt as to

whether this is the ideal purpose after all, and whether we are not at

times directly enjoined to place the pupil at variance with the usage

and customary dealings of the world. If we reflect that an endless

career is open to man for his improvement, we realise that only that

education, whose aims are always the highest, can hope to reach the

lofty goals that mark this career.

“Therefore an ideal aim must be present in the mind of the educator.

Possibly he can obtain information and help from Pestalozzi, whose

nature evinced such ideal tendencies. Pestalozzi wished the welfare of

mankind to be sought in the harmonious cultivation of _all_ powers.

If one only knew what is to be understood by a multiplicity of mental

powers, and what is meant by the _harmony_ of various powers. These

phrases sound very attractive, but give little satisfaction. The purely

_formal_ aims of education will appeal just as little to the educator:

‘Educate the pupil to independence;’ or, ‘educate the pupil to be his

own educator;’ or, ‘educate the pupil so that it will become better

than its educator.’ (Hermann and Dorothea, Hector and Astyanax in the

Iliad). Such and similar attempts to fix the purpose of education are

abundant in the history of pedagogy; but they do not bring us nearer

the goal. In their formal character they do not say, for example, of

what kind the independence shall be, what content it shall have, what

aims it shall have in view, or in what directions its course shall lie.

For the pupil that has become independent can use his freedom rightly

for good just as well as misuse it for evil.”

Herbart’s own theory of education, so far as we may venture to

formulate it, is strictly ethical as opposed to intellectual, that

is, the development and sustenance of the intellect is of secondary

importance to the educator for two reasons: character building is the

matter of first importance to human beings; and this because, (_a_)

train character and intellectual “development” largely takes care

of itself, and (_b_) the lessons designed for intellectual culture

have high ethical value, whether stimulating or disciplinary. This is

familiar ground to us: we too have taught, in season and out of season,

that the formation of character is the aim of the educator. So far,

we are at one with the philosopher; but, may we venture to say it, we

have arrived, through the study of Physiology, at the definiteness of

aim which he desires but does not reach. We must appeal, he says, to

Psychology, but then, he adds, “of course we cannot expect a concordant

answer from all psychologists; and in view of the obscurity which still

prevails in this sphere, the different views as to the nature of the

human soul and the extraordinary difficulty with which the empirical

method of investigation meets, an absolutely indubitable explanation

can hardly be expected.”

This is doubtless true of Psychology alone, but of Psychology

illuminated by Physiology we have another tale to tell. It is the study

of that border-land betwixt mind and matter, the brain, which yields

the richest results to the educator. For the brain is the seat of

habit: the culture of habit is, to a certain extent, physical culture:

the discipline of habit is at least a third part of the great whole

which we call education, and here we feel that the physical science of

to-day has placed us far in advance of the great philosopher of fifty

years ago. We hold with him entirely as to the importance of great

formative ideas in the education of children, but, we add to our ideas,

habits, and we labour to form habits upon a physical basis. Character

is the result not merely of the great ideas which are given to us, but

of the habits which we labour to form _upon those ideas_. We recognise

both principles and the result is a wide range of possibilities

in education, practical methods, and a definite aim. We labour to

produce a human being at his best physically, mentally, morally, and

spiritually, with the enthusiasms of religion, the good life, of

nature, of knowledge, of art and of manual work; and we do _not_ labour

in the dark.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Sonnenschein & Co., 3s.

CHAPTER XXII

_THE TEACHING OF THE “PARENTS’ NATIONAL

EDUCATIONAL UNION”_

PART I