the effort to define anew the scope and the methods of education. In
“A French Eton” (page 61) he says:--“The education of each class in
society has, or ought to have, its ideal, determined by the wants of
that class, and by its destination. Society may be imagined so uniform
that one education shall be suitable for all its members; we have not
a society of that kind, nor has any European country.... Looking at
English society at this moment, one may say that the ideal for the
education of each of its classes to follow, the aim which the education
of each should particularly endeavour to reach, is different.”
This remark helps us to define our position. We lay no claim to
original ideas or methods. We cannot choose but profit by the work of
the great educators. Such men as Locke and Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and
Froebel, have left us an inheritance of educational thought which we
must needs enter upon.
Our work is selective, but not merely so. We are progressive. We take
what former thinkers have left us, and go on from there.
For example, in this matter of class differentiation, we believe we
have scientific grounds for a line of our own. The Fathers (why should
we not have Fathers in education as well as in theology?) worked out,
for the most part, their educational thought with an immediate view to
the children of the poor. Because the children that he had to deal with
had a limited vocabulary, and untrained observing powers, Pestalozzi
taught them to see and then to say: “I see a hole in the carpet. I see
a small hole in the carpet. I see a small round hole in the carpet. I
see a small round hole with a black edge in the carpet,” and so on;
and it is very easy to see how good such training would be for such
children. But what is the case with the children we have to deal with?
We believe to-day on scientific grounds in the doctrine of heredity,
and certainly in this matter experience supports our faith.
_Punch_ has hit off the state of the case: “Come and see the puff-puff,
dear.” “Do you mean the _locomotive_, grandmamma?” As a matter of
fact, the child of four and five has a wider, more exact vocabulary
in everyday use, than that employed by his elders and betters, and
is constantly adding to this vocabulary with surprising quickness;
_ergo_, to give a child of this class a vocabulary is no part of direct
education. Again, we know that nothing escapes the keen scrutiny of the
little people. It is not their perceptive powers we have to train, but
the habit of methodical observation and accurate record.
Generations of physical toil do not tend to foster imagination. How
good, then, for the children of the working classes to have games
initiated for them, to be carried through little dramatic plays until,
perhaps, in the end they will be able to invent such little dramas for
themselves!
But the children of the cultured classes--why, surely their danger
is rather to live too much in realms of fancy. A single sentence in
lesson or talk, the slightest sketch of an historical character, and
they will play at it for a week, inventing endless incidents. Like
Tennyson, when he was a child, they will carry on the story of the
siege and defence of a castle (represented by a mound, with sticks for
its garrison) for weeks together, and a child engrossed with these
larger interests feels a sensible loss of dignity when he flaps his
wings as a pigeon or skips about as a lamb, though, no doubt, he will
do these things with pleasure for the teacher he loves. Imagination is
ravenous for food, not pining for culture, in the children of educated
parents, and education need not concern herself directly, for them,
with the development of the conceptive powers. Then with regard to the
cultivated child’s reasoning powers, most parents have had experiences
of this kind--Tommy is five. His mother had occasion to talk to
him about the Atlantic Cable, and said she did not know how it was
insulated; Tommy remarked next morning that he had been thinking about
it, and perhaps the water itself was an insulator. So far from needing
to develop their children’s reasoning powers, most parents say--“Oh,
wad the gods the giftie gie us”--to answer the everlasting ‘why’ of the
intelligent child.
In a word, to develop the child’s so-called faculties is the main work
of education when _ignorant_ or otherwise _deficient_ children are
concerned; but the children of educated people are never _ignorant_
in this sense. They awake to the world all agog for knowledge, and
with keen-edged faculties; therefore the principle of heredity causes
us to recast our idea of the office of education, and to recognise
that the child of intelligent parents is born with an inheritance of
self-developing faculties.
Thus education naturally divides itself into education for the
children of _lettered_, and education for the children of _unlettered_
parents. In fact, this class question, which we are all anxious to
evade in common life, comes practically into force in education. It is
absolutely necessary to individualise and say, this part of education
is the most important for _this_ child, or _this_ class, but may be
relegated into a lower place for another child or another class.
If science limits our range of work as regards the development of
so-called faculties, it extends it in equal measure with regard to
habit. Here we have no new doctrine to proclaim. “One custom overcometh
another,” said Thomas à Kempis, and that is all we have to say; only
physiologists have made clear to us the _rationale_ of this law of
habit. We know that to form in his child right habits of thinking and
behaving is a parent’s chief duty, and that this can be done for every
child definitely and within given limits of time. But this question has
been already dealt with, and we need do no more than remind parents of
what they already know.
To nourish a child daily with loving, right, and noble ideas we believe
to be the parent’s next duty. The child having once received the Idea
will assimilate it in his own way, and work it into the fabric of
his life; and a single sentence from his mother’s lips may give him
a bent that will make him, or may tend to make him, painter or poet,
statesman or philanthropist. The object of lessons should be in the
main twofold: to train a child in certain mental habits, as attention,
accuracy, promptness, &c., and to nourish him with ideas which may bear
fruit in his life.
There are other educational principles which we bear in mind and
work out, but for the moment it is worth while for us to concentrate
our thought upon the fact that one of our objects is to accentuate
the importance of education under the two heads of the _formation
of habits_ and the _presentation of ideas_, and as a corollary to
recognise that the _development_ of _faculties_ is not a supreme object
with the cultivated classes, because this is work which has been done
for their children in a former generation.
But how does all this work? Is it practical? Is it the question of
to-day? It must needs be practical because it gives the fullest
recognition to the two principles of human nature, the _material_, and
the _spiritual_. We are ready to concede all that the most advanced
biologist would ask of us. Does he say, “Thought is only a mode of
motion?” if so, we are not dismayed. We know that ninety-nine out of
a hundred thoughts that pass through our minds are involuntary, the
inevitable result of those modifications of the brain tissue which
habit has set up. The mean man thinks mean thoughts, the magnanimous
man great thoughts, because we all think as we are accustomed to
think, and Physiology shows us why. On the other hand, we recognise
that greater is the spirit within us than the matter which it governs.
Every habit has its beginning. The beginning is the _idea_ which comes
with a stir and takes possession of us. The _idea_ is the motive power
of life, and it is because we recognise the spiritual potency of the
_idea_ that we are able to bow reverently before the fact that God the
Holy Spirit is Himself the Supreme Educator, dealing with each of us
severally in the things we call sacred and those we call secular. We
lay ourselves open to the spiritual impact of ideas whether these be
conveyed by the printed page, the human voice, or whether they reach us
without visible sign.
But ideas may be evil or may be good; and to choose between the ideas
that present themselves is, as we have been taught, the one responsible
work of a human being. It is the power of choice that we would give our
children. We ask ourselves “Is there any fruitful idea underlying this
or that study that the children are engaged in?” We divest ourselves
of the notion that to develop the faculties is the chief thing, and
a “subject” which does not rise out of some great thought of life we
usually reject as not nourishing, not fruitful; while we usually, but
not invariably, retain those studies which give exercise in habits of
clear and orderly thinking. We have some gymnastics of the mind whose
object is to exercise what we call faculties as well as to train in the
habit of clear and ordered thinking. Mathematics, grammar, logic, &c.,
are not purely disciplinary; they do develop, if a bull may be allowed
us, intellectual muscle. We by no means reject the familiar staples of
education, in the school sense, but we prize them even more for the
record of intellectual habits they leave in the brain tissue than for
their distinct value in developing certain “faculties.” Thus our first
thought with regard to Nature-knowledge is that the child should have
a living personal acquaintance with the things he sees. It concerns
us more that he should know bistort from persicaria, hawkweed from
dandelion, and where to find this and that, and how it looks, living
and growing, than that he should talk learnedly about _epigynous_ and
_hypogynous_. All this is well in its place, but should come quite
late, after the child has seen and studied the living growing thing _in
situ_, and has copied colour and gesture as best he can.
So of object lessons, we are not anxious to develop his observing
powers on little bits of everything which he shall describe as opaque,
brittle, malleable, and so on. We would prefer not to take the edge
off his curiosity in this way; we should rather leave him receptive
and respectful for one of those opportunities for asking questions and
engaging in talk with his parents about the lock in the river, the
mowing machine, the ploughed field, which offer real seed to the mind
of a child, and never make him a priggish little person able to tell
all about it.
Once more, we know that there is a storehouse of thought wherein we may
find all the great ideas that have moved the world. We are above all
things anxious to give the child the key to this storehouse.
The education of the day, it is said, does not produce _reading_
people. We are determined that the children shall love books, therefore
we do not interpose ourselves between the book and the child. We read
him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch,
not trying too much to break up or water down, but leaving the child’s
mind to deal with the matter as it can. We endeavour that all our
teaching and treatment of children shall be on the lines of nature,
_their_ nature and ours, for we do not recognise what is called
“Child-nature.” We believe that children are human beings at their
best and sweetest but also at their weakest and least wise. We are
careful not to water down life for them but to present such portions
to them in such quantities as they can readily receive. In a word we
are very tenacious of the dignity and individuality of our children.
We recognise steady, regular growth with no _transition_ stage. This
teaching is up to date, but it is as old as common sense. Our claim
is that our common sense rests on a basis of Physiology, that we show
a reason for all that we do, and that we recognise “the science of
the proportion of things,” put the first thing foremost, do not take
too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope for the workings of
nature and of a higher Power than nature herself.
CHAPTER XXIII
_THE TEACHING OF THE PARENTS’ NATIONAL
EDUCATIONAL UNION_
PART II
As the philosophy which underlies any educational or social scheme is
really the vital part of that scheme, it may be well to set forth,
however meagrely, some fragments of P.N.E.U. Philosophy.
We believe--
That disposition, intellect, genius, come pretty much by nature.
That _character_ is an achievement, the one practical achievement
possible to us for ourselves and for our children.
That all real advance, in family or individual, or nation, is along the
lines of character.
That, therefore, to direct and assist the evolution of character is the
chief office of education.
But perhaps we shall clear the ground better by throwing a little of
the teaching of the Union into categorical form:--
What is character?
The resultant or residuum of conduct.
That is to say, a man is what he has made himself by the thoughts in
which he has allowed himself, the words he has spoken, the deeds he has
done.
How does conduct itself originate?
Commonly, in our habitual modes of thought. We think as we are
accustomed to think, and, therefore, act as we are accustomed to act.
What, again, is the origin of these habits of thought and act?
Commonly, inherited disposition. The man who is generous, obstinate,
hot-tempered, devout, is so, on the whole, because that strain of
character runs in his family.
Are there any means of modifying inherited dispositions?
Yes; marriage, for the race; education, for the individual.
How may a bad habit which has its rise in an inherited disposition be
corrected?
By the contrary good habit: as Thomas à Kempis has said, “One custom
overcometh another.”
Trace the genesis of a habit.
Every act proceeds from a thought. Every thought modifies somewhat the
material structure of the brain. That is, the nerve substance of the
brain forms itself to the manner of thoughts we think. The habit of act
arises from the habit of thought. The person who thinks, “Oh, it will
do;” “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” forms a habit of negligent and imperfect
work.
How may such habit be corrected?
By introducing the contrary line of thought, which will lead to
contrary action. “This _must_ be done well, because----”
Is it enough to think such thought once?
No; the stimulus of the new idea must be applied until it is, so to
speak, at home in the brain, and arises involuntarily.
What do you mean by involuntary thought?
The brain is at work unceasingly, is always thinking, or rather is
always being acted upon by thought, as the keys of an instrument by the
fingers of a player.
Is the person aware of all the thoughts that the brain elaborates?
No; only of those which are new and “striking.” The old familiar “way
of thinking” beats in the brain without the consciousness of the
thinker.
What name is given to this unconscious thought?
Unconscious (or involuntary) cerebration.
Why is it important to the educator?
Because most of our actions spring from thoughts of which we are not
conscious, or, anyway, which are involuntary.
Is there any means of altering the trend of unconscious cerebration?
Yes; by diverting it into a new channel.
The “unconscious cerebration” of the greedy child runs upon cakes and
sweetmeats: how may this be corrected?
By introducing a new idea--the pleasure of giving pleasure with these
good things, for example.
Is the greedy child capable of receiving such new idea?
Most certainly; because benevolence, the desire of benefiting others,
is one of those springs of action in every human being that need only
to be touched to make them act.
Give an example of this fact.
Mungo Park, dying of thirst, hunger, and weariness in an African
desert, found himself in the vicinity of a cannibal tribe. He gave
himself up for lost, but a woman of the tribe found him, took
compassion on him, brought him milk, hid him, and nourished him until
he was restored and could take care of himself.
Are there any other springs of action which may be touched with effect
in every human being?
Yes, such as the desire of knowledge, of society, of distinction,
of wealth; friendship, gratitude, and many more. Indeed, it is not
possible to incite a human being to any sort of good and noble conduct
but you touch a responsive spring.
How, then, can human beings do amiss?
Because the good feelings have their opposite bad feelings, springs
which also await a touch. Malevolence is opposed to benevolence. It is
easy to imagine that the unstable savage woman might have been amongst
the first to devour the man she cherished, had one of her tribe given
an impulse to the springs of hatred within her.
In view of these internal impulses, what is the duty of the educator?
To make himself acquainted with the springs of action in a human being,
and to touch them with such wisdom, tenderness and moderation that the
child is insensibly led into the habits of the good life.
Name some of these habits.
Diligence, reverence, gentleness, truthfulness, promptness, neatness,
courtesy; in fact, the virtues and graces which belong to persons who
have been “well brought up.”
Is it enough to stimulate a spring of action--say, curiosity, or the
desire of knowledge, once in order to secure a habit?
No; the stimulus must be repeated, and action upon it secured over and
over many times before a habit is formed.
What common error do people make about the formation of habits?
They allow lapses; they train a child to “shut the door after him”
twenty times, and allow him to leave it open the twenty-first.
With what result?
That the work has to be done over again, because the growth of brain
tissue to the new habit (the forming of cell-connections) has been
disturbed. The result would appear to be much the same as when the
flesh-forming process which knits up a wound is disturbed.
Then the educator should “time” himself in forming habits? How long may
it take to cure a bad habit, and form the contrary good one?
Perhaps a month or six weeks of careful incessant treatment may be
enough.
But such treatment requires an impossible amount of care and
watchfulness on the part of the educator?
Yes; but not more than is given to the cure of any bodily
disease--measles, or scarlet fever, for example.
Then the thoughts and actions of a human being may be regulated
mechanically, so to speak, by setting up the right nerve currents in
the brain?
This is true only so far as it is true to say that the keys of a piano
produce music.
But the thoughts, which may be represented by the fingers of the
player, do they not also run their course without the consciousness of
the thinker?
They do; not merely vague, inconsequent musings, but thoughts which
follow each other with more or less logical sequence, according to the
previous training of the thinker.
Would you illustrate this?
Mathematicians have been known to think out abstruse problems in their
sleep; the bard improvises, authors “reel off” without premeditation,
without any deliberate intention to write such and such things.
The thoughts follow each other according to the habit of thinking
previously set up in the brain of the thinker.
Is it that the thoughts go round and round a subject like a horse in a
mill?
No; the horse is rather drawing a carriage along the same high road,
but into ever new developments of the landscape.
In this light, the important thing is how you _begin_ to think on any
subject?
Precisely so; the initial thought or suggestion touches as it were the
spring which sets in motion a possibly endless succession or train of
ideas; thoughts which are, so to speak, elaborated in the brain almost
without the consciousness of the thinker.
Are these thoughts, or successive ideas, random, or do they make for
any conclusion?
They make for the logical conclusion which should follow the initial
idea.
Then the reasoning power may be set to work involuntarily?
Yes; the sole concern of this power is, apparently, to work out the
rational conclusion from any idea presented to it.
But surely this power of arriving at logical rational conclusions
almost unconsciously is the result of education, most likely of
generations of culture?
It exists in greater or less degree according as it is disciplined and
exercised; but it is by no means the result of education as the word is
commonly understood: witness the following anecdote:[17]
“When Captain Head was travelling across the Pampas of South America,
his guide one day suddenly stopped him, and, pointing high into the
air, cried out, ‘A lion!’ Surprised at such an exclamation, accompanied
with such an act, he turned up his eyes, and with difficulty perceived,
at an immeasurable height, a flight of condors soaring in circles in
a particular spot. Beneath this spot, far out of sight of himself or
guide, lay the carcass of a horse, and over this carcass stood, as the
guide well knew, a lion, whom the condors were eyeing with envy from
their airy height. The sight of the birds was to him what the sight of
the lion alone would have been to the traveller, a full assurance of
its existence. Here was an act of thought which cost the thinker no
trouble, which was as easy to him as to cast his eyes upward, yet which
from us, unaccustomed to the subject, would require many steps and some
labour.”
Then is what is called “the reason” innate in human beings?
Yes, it is innate, and is exercised without volition by all, but gains
in power and precision, according as it is cultivated.
If the reason, especially the trained reason, arrives at the right
conclusion without any effort of volition on the part of the thinker,
it is practically an infallible guide to conduct?
On the contrary, the reason is pledged to pursue a suggestion to its
logical conclusion only. Much of the history of religious persecutions
and of family and international feuds turns on the confusion which
exists in most minds between that which is logically inevitable and
that which is morally right.
But according to this doctrine any theory whatever may be shown to be
logically inevitable?
Exactly so; the initial idea once received, the difficulty is, not to
prove that it is tenable, but to restrain the mind from proving that it
is so.
Can you illustrate this point?
The child who lets himself be jealous of his brother is almost startled
by the flood of convincing proofs that he does well to be angry, which
rush in upon him. Beginning with a mere flash of suspicion in the
morning, the little Cain finds himself in the evening possessed of
irrefragable proofs that his brother is unjustly preferred to him: and
“All seems infected that the infected spy
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.”
But supposing it is true that the child has cause for jealousy?
Given, the starting idea, and his reason is equally capable of proving
a logical certainty, whether it is true or whether it is not true.
Is there any historical proof of this startling theory?
Perhaps every failure in conduct, in individuals, and in nations, is
due to the confusion which exists as to that which is logically right,
as established by the reason, and that which is morally right, as
established by external law.
Is any such distinction recognised in the Bible?
Distinctly so; the _transgressors_ of the Bible are those who do that
which is _right_ in their own eyes--that is, that of which their reason
approves. Modern thought considers, on the contrary, that all men are
justified in doing that which is right in their own eyes, acting “up to
their lights,” “obeying the dictates of their reason.”
For example?
A mother whose cruel usage had caused the death of her child was
morally exonerated lately in a court of justice because she acted
“from a mistaken sense of duty.”
But it is not possible to err from a mistaken sense of duty?
Not only possible, but inevitable, if a man accept his “own reason” as
his lawgiver and judge. Take a test case, the case of the superlative
crime that has been done upon the earth. There can be no doubt that
the persons who caused the death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
acted under a mistaken sense of duty. “It is expedient that one man
die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not,” said, most
reasonably, those patriotic leaders of the Jews; and they relentlessly
hunted to death this Man whose ascendency over the common people and
whose whispered claims to kingship were full of elements of danger to
the subject race. “They know not what they do,” He said, Who is the
Truth.
All this may be of importance to philosophers; but what has it to do
with the bringing up of children?
It is time we reverted to the teaching of Socrates. “Know thyself,”
exhorted the wise man, in season and out of season; and it will be well
with us when we understand that to acquaint a child with himself--what
he is as a human being--is a great part of education.
It is difficult to see why; surely much harm comes of morbid
introspection?
Introspection is morbid or diseased when the person imagines that
all which he finds within him is peculiar to him as an individual.
To know what is common to all men is a sound cure for unhealthy
self-contemplation.
How does it work?
To recognise the limitations of the reason is a safeguard in all
the duties and relations of life. The man who knows that loyalty is
his first duty in every relation, and that if he admit doubting,
grudging, unlovely thoughts, he cannot possibly be loyal, because such
thoughts once admitted will prove themselves to be right and fill the
whole field of thought, why, he is on his guard, and writes up “no
admittance” to every manner of mistrustful fancy.
That rule of life should affect the Supreme relationship?
Truly, yes; if a man will admit no beginning of mistrustful surmise
concerning his father and mother, his child and his wife, shall he do
so of Him who is more than they, and more than all, the “Lord of his
heart”? “Loyalty forbids” is the answer to every questioning of His
truth that would intrude.
But when others, whom you must needs revere, question and tell you of
their “honest doubt”?
You know the history of their doubt, and can take it for what it is
worth--its origin in the suggestion, which, once admitted, must needs
reach a logical conclusion even to the bitter end. “Take heed that ye
_enter_ not into temptation,” He said, Who needed not that any should
tell Him, for He knew what was in men.
If man is the creature of those habits he forms with care or allows in
negligence, if his very thoughts are involuntary and his conclusions
inevitable, he ceases to be a free agent. One might as well concede at
once that “thought is a mode of motion,” and cease to regard man as a
spiritual being capable of self-regulation!
It is hardly possible to concede too wide a field to biological
research, if we keep well to the front the fact, that man is a
spiritual being whose material organs act in obedience to spiritual
suggestion; that, for example, as the hand writes, so the brain thinks,
in obedience to suggestions.
Is the suggestion self originated?
Probably not; it would appear that, as the material life is sustained
upon its appropriate food from without, so the immaterial life is
sustained upon _its_ food,--ideas or suggestions spiritually conveyed.
May the words “idea” and “suggestion” be used as synonymous terms?
Only in so far as that ideas convey suggestions to be effected in acts.
What part does the man himself play in the reception of this immaterial
food?
It is as though one stood on the threshold to admit or reject the
viands which should sustain the family.
Is this free-will in the reception or rejection of ideas the limit of
man’s responsibility in the conduct of his life?
Probably it is; for an idea once received must run its course, unless
it be superseded by another idea, in the reception of which volition is
again exercised.
How do ideas originate?
They appear to be spiritual emanations from spiritual beings; thus, one
man conveys to another the idea which is a very part of himself.
Is the intervention of a bodily presence necessary for the transmission
of an idea?
By no means; ideas may be conveyed through picture or printed
page; absent friends would appear to communicate ideas without the
intervention of means; natural objects convey ideas, but, perhaps, the
initial idea in this case may always be traced to another mind.
Then the spiritual sustenance of ideas is derived directly or
indirectly from other human beings?
No; and here is the great recognition which the educator is called
upon to make. God, the Holy Spirit, is Himself the supreme Educator of
mankind.
How?
He openeth man’s ear morning by morning, to hear so much of the best as
the man is able to bear.
Are the ideas suggested by the Holy Spirit confined to the sphere of
the religious life?
No; Coleridge, speaking of Columbus and the discovery of America,
ascribes the origin of great inventions and discoveries to the fact
that “certain ideas of the natural world are presented to minds,
already prepared to receive them, by a higher Power than Nature
herself.”
Is there any teaching in the Bible to support this view?
Yes; very much. Isaiah, for example, says that the ploughman knows how
to carry on the successive operations of husbandry, “for his God doth
instruct him and doth teach him.”
Are all ideas which have a purely spiritual origin ideas of good?
Unhappily, no; it is the sad experience of mankind that suggestions of
evil also are spiritually conveyed.
What is the part of the man?
To choose the good and refuse the evil.
Does this doctrine of ideas as the spiritual food needful to sustain
the immaterial life throw any light on the doctrines of the Christian
religion?
Yes; the Bread of Life, the Water of Life, the Word by which man lives,
the “meat to eat which ye know not of,” and much more, cease to be
figurative expressions, except that we must use the same words to name
the corporeal and the incorporeal sustenance of man. We understand,
moreover, how suggestions emanating from our Lord and Saviour, which
are of His essence, are the spiritual meat and drink of His believing
people. We find it no longer a “hard saying,” nor a dark saying, that
we must sustain our spiritual selves upon Him, even as our bodies upon
bread.
What practical bearing upon the educator has this doctrine of ideas?
He knows that it is his part to place before the child daily
nourishment of ideas; that he may give the child the right initial idea
in every study, and respecting each relation and duty of life; above
all, he recognises the divine co-operation in the direction, teaching,
and training of the child.
How would you summarise the functions of education?
Education is a discipline--that is, the discipline of the good habits
in which the child is trained. Education is a life, nourished upon
ideas; and education is an atmosphere--that is, the child breathes the
atmosphere emanating from his parents; that of the ideas which rule
their own lives.
What part do lessons and the general work of the schoolroom play in
education thus regarded?
They should afford opportunity for the discipline of many good habits,
and should convey to the child such initial ideas of interest in his
various studies as to make the pursuit of knowledge on those lines an
object in life and a delight to him.
What duty lies upon parents and others who regard education thus
seriously, as a lever by means of which character may be elevated,
almost indefinitely?
Perhaps it is incumbent upon them to make conscientious endeavours
to further all means used to spread the views they hold; believing
that there is such “progress in character and virtue” possible to the
redeemed human race as has not yet been realised, or even imagined.
“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”[18]
FOOTNOTES:
[17] From Archbishop Thompson’s _Laws of Thought_.
[18] Matthew Arnold.
CHAPTER XXIV
_WHENCE AND WHITHER_
PART I
“The P.N.E.U. goes on,” an observer writes, “without puff or fuss, by
its own inherent force;” and it is making singularly rapid progress.
At the present moment not less than ten thousand children of thinking,
educated parents, are being brought up, more or less consciously and
definitely, upon the line of the Union. Parents who read the _Parents’
Review_, or other literature of the Society, parents who belong to our
various branches, or our other agencies, parents who are influenced by
these parents, are becoming multitudinous; and all have one note in
common,--the ardour of persons working out inspiring ideas.
It is hardly possible to over-estimate the force of this league of
educated parents. When we think of the part that the children being
brought up under these influences will one day play in the leading
and ruling of the land, we are solemnised with the sense of a great
responsibility, and it behoves us to put to ourselves, once again, the
two searching queries by which every movement should, from time to
time, be adjudged,--Whence? and Whither?
_Whence?_ The man who is satisfied with his dwelling-place has no wish
to move, and the mere fact of a “movement” is a declaration that we
are not satisfied, and that we are definitely on our way to some other
ends than those commonly accepted. In one respect only we venture
boldly to hark back. Exceedingly fine men and women were brought up by
our grandfathers and grandmothers, even by our mothers and fathers, and
the wise and old amongst us, though they look on with great sympathy,
yet have an unexpressed feeling that men and women were made on the old
lines of a stamp which we shall find it hard to improve upon. This was
no mere chance result, nor did it come out of the spelling-book or the
Pinnock’s Catechisms which we have long ago consigned to the limbo they
deserve.
The teaching of the old days was as bad as it could be, the training
was haphazard work, reckless alike of physiology and psychology; but
our grandfathers and grandmothers had one saving principle, which,
for the last two or three decades, we have been, of set purpose,
labouring to lose. They, of the older generation, recognised children
as reasonable beings, persons of mind and conscience like themselves,
but needing their guidance and control, as having neither knowledge
nor experience. Witness the queer old children’s books which have come
down to us; before all things, these addressed children as reasonable,
intelligent and responsible (terribly responsible!) persons. This
fairly represents the note of home-life in the last generation. So
soon as the baby realised his surroundings, he found himself a morally
and intellectually responsible person. Now one of the secrets of
power in dealing with our fellow beings is, to understand that human
nature does that which it is expected to do and is that which it is
expected to be. We do not mean, _believed_ to do and to be, with the
fond and foolish faith which Mrs. Hardcastle bestowed on her dear Tony
Lumpkin. Expectation strikes another chord, the chord of “_I am, I can,
I ought_,” which must vibrate in every human breast, for, “’tis our
nature to.” The capable, dependable men and women whom we all know were
reared upon this principle.
But now? Now, many children in many homes are still brought up on the
old lines, but not with quite the unfaltering certitude of the old
times. Other thoughts are in the air. A baby is a huge oyster (says
one eminent psychologist) whose business is to feed, and to sleep,
and to grow. Even Professor Sully, in his most delightful book,[19]
is torn in two. The children have conquered him, have convinced him
beyond doubt that they are as ourselves, only more so. But then he is
an evolutionist, and feels himself pledged to accommodate the child to
the principles of evolution. Therefore, the little person is supposed
to go through a thousand stages of moral and intellectual development,
leading him from the condition of the savage or ape to that of
the intelligent and cultivated human being. If children will not
accommodate themselves pleasantly to this theory, why, that is their
fault, and Professor Sully is too true a child-lover not to give us the
children as they are, with little interludes of the theory upon which
they ought to evolve. Now we have absolutely no theory to advance,
and are, on scientific grounds, disposed to accept the theories of
the evolutionary psychologists. But facts are too strong for us. When
we consider the enormous intellectual labour the infant goes through
during his first year in accommodating himself to the conditions of a
new world, in learning to discern between far and near, solid and flat,
large and small, and a thousand other qualifications and limitations
of this perplexing world, why, we are not surprised that John Stuart
Mill should be well on in his Greek at five; that Arnold at three
should know all the Kings and Queens of England by their portraits; or
that a musical baby should have an extensive repertoire of the musical
classics.
We were once emphasising the fact that every child could learn to
speak two languages at once with equal facility, when a gentleman in
the audience stated that he had a son who was a missionary in Bagdad,
married to a German lady, and their little son of three expressed all
he had to say with equal fluency in three languages--German, English,
and Arabic, using each in speaking to those persons whose language it
was. “Nana, which does God love best, little girls or little boys?”
said a meditative little girl of four. “Oh, little girls, to be sure,”
said Nana, with a good-natured wish to please. “Then if God loves
little girls best, why was not God Himself a little girl?” Which of
us who have reached the later stages of evolution would have hit
upon a more conclusive argument? If the same little girl asked on
another occasion, watching the blackbirds at the cherries: “Nana, if
the bees make honey, do the birds make jam?” it was by no means an
inane question, and only proves that we older persons are dull and
inappreciative of such mysteries of nature as that bees should make
honey.
This is how we find children--with intelligence more acute, logic more
keen, observing powers more alert, moral sensibilities more quick, love
and faith and hope more abounding; in fact, in all points like as we
are, only much more so, but absolutely ignorant of the world and its
belongings, of us and our ways, and, above all, of how to control and
direct and manifest the infinite possibilities with which they are born.
Our conception of a child rules our relations towards him. _Pour
s’amuser_ is the rule of child-life proper for the “oyster” theory,
and most of our children’s books and many of our theories of
child-education are based upon this rule. “Oh! he’s so happy,” we say,
and are content, believing that if he is happy he will be good; and it
is so to a great extent; but in the older days the theory was, if you
are good you will be happy; and this is a principle which strikes the
keynote of endeavour, and holds good, not only through the childish
“stage of evolution,” but for the whole of life, here and hereafter.
The child who has learned to “endeavour himself” (as the Prayer Book
has it) has learned to live.
If our conception of _Whence?_ as regards the child, as of--
“A Being, breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death,”--
is old, that of our grandfathers; our conception of the aims and
methods of education, is new, only made possible within the very last
decades of the century; because it rests one foot upon the latest
advances in the science of Biology and the other upon the potent secret
of these latter days, that matter is the all-serviceable agent of
spirit, and that spirit forms, moulds, is absolute lord, over matter,
as capable of affecting the material convolutions of the brain as of
influencing what used to be called the heart.
Knowing that the brain is the physical seat of habit, and that
conduct and character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow:
knowing, too, that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought,
and, hence, a new habit of life; we perceive that the great work of
education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to the
relations of life, departments of knowledge, subjects of thought: and
to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good
life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas.
In this great work we seek and assuredly find the co-operation of the
Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to _modern_
thought, as the Supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been
called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred.
We are free to give our whole force to these two great educational
labours, of the inspiration of ideas and the formation of habits,
because, except in the case of children somewhat mentally deficient,
we do not consider that the “development of faculties” is any part of
our work; seeing that the children’s so-called faculties are already
greatly more acute than our own.
We have, too, in our possession, a test for systems that are brought
under our notice, and can pronounce upon their educational value.
For example, a little while ago, the London Board Schools held an
exhibition of work; and great interest was excited by an exhibit which
came from New York representing a week’s work in a school. The children
worked for a week upon “an apple.” They modelled it in clay, they
painted it in brushwork, they stitched the outline on cardboard, they
pricked it, they laid it in sticks (the pentagonal form of the seed
vessel). Older boys and girls modelled an apple-tree and made a little
ladder on which to run up the apple-tree and gather the apples, and
a wheel-barrow to carry the apples away, and a great deal more of the
same kind. Everybody said, “How pretty, how ingenious, what a good
idea!” and went away with the notion that here, at last, was education.
But _we_ ask, “What was the informing idea?” The external shape, the
internal contents of an apple,--matters with which the children were
already exceedingly well acquainted. What mental habitudes were gained
by this week’s work? They certainly learned to look at the apple, but
think how many things they might have got familiar acquaintance with in
the time. Probably the children were not consciously bored, because the
impulse of the teachers enthusiasm carried them on. But, think of it--
“Rabbits hot and rabbits cold,
Rabbits young and rabbits old,
Rabbits tender and rabbits tough,”--
no doubt those children had enough--of apples anyway. This “apple”
course is most instructive to us as emphasising the tendency in the
human mind to accept and rejoice in any neat system which will produce
immediate results, rather than to bring every such little course to the
test of whether it does or does not further either or both of our great
educational principles.
_Whither?_ Our “whence” opens to us a “whither” of infinitely
delightful possibilities. Seeing that each of us is labouring for
the advance of the human race through the individual child we are
educating, we consider carefully in what directions this advance is
due, and indicated, and we proceed of set purpose and, endeavour to
educate our children so that they shall advance with the tide. “Can ye
not discern the signs of the times?” A new Renaissance is coming upon
us, of unspeakably higher import than the last; and we are bringing
up our children to lead and guide, and, by every means help in the
progress--progress by leaps and bounds--which the world is about to
make. But “whither” is too large a question for the close of a chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] “Studies of Childhood,” by Professor Sully
(_Longmans_, 10_s._ 6_d._).
CHAPTER XXV
_WHENCE AND WHITHER_
PART II
The morphologist, the biologist, leave many without hesitation in
following the great _bouleversement_ of thought, summed up in the term
_evolution_. They are no longer able to believe otherwise than that
man is the issue of processes, ages long in their development; and
what is more, and even more curious, that each individual child, from
the moment of his conception to that of his birth, appears in his own
person to mark an incredible number of the stages of this evolutionary
process. The realisation of this truth has made a great impression
on the minds of men. We feel ourselves to be part of a process, and
to be called upon, at the same time, to assist in the process, not
for ourselves exactly, but for any part of the world upon which our
influence bears; especially for the children who are so peculiarly
given over to us. But there comes, as we have seen, a point where we
must arise and make our protest. The physical evolution of man may
admit of no doubt; the psychical evolution, on the other hand, is not
only, _not proven_, but the whole weight of existing evidence appears
to go into the opposite scale.
The age of materialism has run its course: we recognise matter as
force, but as altogether subject force, and that it is the spirit
of a man which shapes and uses his material substance, in its own
ways to its own ends. Who can tell the way of the spirit? Perhaps
this is one of the ultimate questions upon which man has not yet
been able to speculate to any purpose; but when we consider the
almost unlimited powers of loving and of trusting, of discriminating
and of apprehending, of perceiving and of knowing, which a child
possesses, and compare these with the blunted sensibilities and slower
apprehension of the grown man or woman of the same calibre, we are
certainly not inclined to think that growth from less to more, and from
small to great, is the condition of the spiritual life: that is, of
that part of us which loves and worships, reasons and thinks, learns
and applies knowledge. Rather would it seem to be true of every child
in his degree, as of the divine and typical Child, that He giveth not
the Spirit by measure to him.
It is curious how the philosophy of the Bible is always well in advance
of our latest thought. “He grew in wisdom and in stature,” we are
told. Now what is wisdom--philosophy? Is it not the recognition of
_relations_? First, we have to understand relations of time and space
and matter, the natural philosophy which made up so much of the wisdom
of Solomon; then, by slow degrees, and more and more, we learn that
moral philosophy which determines our relations of love and justice
and duty to each other: later, perhaps, we investigate the profound
and puzzling subject of the inter-relations of our own most composite
being,--mental philosophy. And in all these and beyond all these we
apprehend slowly and feebly the highest relation of all, the relation
to God, which we call religion. In this science of the relations of
things consists what we call wisdom, and wisdom is not born in any
man,--apparently not even in the Son of man Himself. He grew in wisdom,
in the sweet gradual apprehension of all the relations of life: but the
power of apprehending, the strong, subtle, discerning spirit, whose
function it is to grasp and understand, appropriate and use, all the
relations which bind all things to all other things--this was not given
to Him by measure; nor, we may reverently believe, is it so given to us.
That there are differences in the measures of men, in their
intellectual and moral stature, is evident enough; but it is well
that we should realise the nature of these differences, that they
are differences in kind and not in degree; depending upon what we
glibly call the laws of heredity, which bring it to pass that man
in his various aspects shall make up that conceivably perfect whole
possible to mankind. This is a quite different thing from the notion
of a small and feeble measure of heart and intellect in the child, to
grow by degrees into the robust and noble spiritual development which,
according to the psychical evolutionist, should distinguish the adult
human being.
These are quite practical and simple considerations for every one
entrusted with the bringing up of a child, and are not to be set
aside as abstract principles, the discussion of which should serve
little purpose beyond that of sharpening the wits of the schoolmen.
As a matter of fact, we do not _realise_ children, we under-estimate
them; in the divine words, we “despise” them, with the best intentions
in the world, because we confound the immaturity of their frames,
and their absolute ignorance as to the relations of things, with
spiritual impotence: whereas the fact probably is, that never is
intellectual power so keen, the moral sense so strong, spiritual
perception so piercing, as in those days of childhood which we regard
with a supercilious, if kindly, smile. A child is a person in whom all
possibilities are present--present now at this very moment--not to be
educed after years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator:
but indeed it is a greater thing to direct and use this wealth of
spiritual power than to develop the so-called faculties of the child.
It cannot be too strongly urged that our education of children will
depend, _nolens volens_, upon the conception we form of them. If we
regard them as instruments fit and capable for the carrying out of
the Divine purpose in the progress of the world, we shall endeavour
to discern the signs of the times, perceive in what directions we are
being led, and prepare the children to carry forward the work of the
world, by giving them vitalising ideas concerning, at any rate, some
departments of that work.
Having settled it with ourselves that we and the children alike live
for the advancement of the race, that our work is immediately with
them, and, through them, mediately for all, and that they are perfectly
fitted to receive those ideas which are for the inspiration of life, we
must next settle it with ourselves in what directions we shall set up
spiritual activities in the children.
We have sought to establish our _whence_ in the potency of the child,
we will look for our _whither_ in the living thought of the day, which
probably indicates the directions in which the race is making progress.
We find that all men everywhere are keenly interested in science, that
the world waits and watches for great discoveries; we, too, wait and
watch, believing that, as Coleridge said long ago, great ideas of
Nature are imparted to minds already prepared to receive them by a
higher Power than Nature herself.
At a late meeting of the British Association, the President lamented
that the progress of science was greatly hindered by the fact that we
no longer have field naturalists--close observers of Nature as she
is. A literary journal made a lamentable remark thereupon. It is all
written in books, said this journal, so we have no longer any need
to go to Nature herself. Now the knowledge of Nature which we get
out of books is not real knowledge; the use of books is, to help the
young student to verify facts he has already seen for himself. We, of
the P.N.E.U., are before all things, Nature-lovers; we conceive that
intimate acquaintance with every natural object within his reach is the
first, and possibly, the best part of a child’s education. For himself,
all his life long, he will be soothed by--
“The breathing balm,
The silence and the calm,
Of mute insensate things.”
And for science, he is in a position to do just the work which is most
needed; he will be a close loving observer of Nature at first hand,
storing facts, and free from all impatient greed for inferences.
Looking out on the realm of Art again, we think we discern the signs
of the times. Some of us begin to learn the lesson which a prophet has
been raised up to deliver to this generation. We begin to understand
that mere technique, however perfect--whether in the rendering of
flesh tints, or marbles, or of a musical composition of extreme
difficulty--is not necessarily high Art. It is beginning to dawn upon
us that Art is great only in proportion to the greatness of the idea
that it expresses; while, what we ask of the execution, the technique,
is that it shall be adequate to the inspiring idea. But surely these
high themes have nothing to do with the bringing up of children? Yes,
they have; everything. In the first place, we shall permit no _pseudo_
Art to live in the same house with our children; next, we shall bring
our own facile tastes and opinions to some such searching test as we
have indicated, knowing that the children imbibe the thoughts that
are in us, whether we will or no; and, lastly, we shall inspire our
children with those great ideas which shall create a demand, anyway,
for great Art.
In literature, we have definite ends in view, both for our own
children, and for the world through them. We wish the children to grow
up to find joy and refreshment in the taste, the flavour of a _book_.
We do not mean by a book any printed matter in a binding, but a work
possessing certain literary qualities able to bring that sensible
delight to the reader which belongs to a literary word fitly spoken.
It is a sad fact that we are losing our joy in literary form. We are
in such haste to be instructed by facts or titillated by theories,
that we have no leisure to linger over the mere putting of a thought.
But this is our error, for words are mighty both to delight and to
inspire. If we were not as blind as bats, we should long ago have
discovered a truth very fully indicated in the Bible--that that which
is once said with perfect fitness can never be said again, and becomes
ever thereafter a living power in the world. But in literature, as in
art, we require more than mere form. Great ideas are brooding over the
chaos of our thought; and it is he who shall say the things we are all
dumbly thinking, who shall be to us as a teacher sent from God.
For the children? They must grow up upon the best. There must never
be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen
to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are
unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let
Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” represent their standard in poetry; Defoe
and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will
demand _literature_, that is, the fit and beautiful expression of
inspiring ideas and pictures of life. Perhaps a printed form to the
effect that gifts of books to the children will not be welcome in such
and such a family, would greatly assist in this endeavour!
To instance one more point--there is a reaching out in all directions
after the conception expressed in the words “solidarity of the race.”
We have probably never before felt as now in absolute relation with
all men everywhere; everything human is precious to us, the past
belongs to us as the present, and we linger tenderly over evidences
of the personality of men and women who lived ages ago. An American
poet expresses this feeling with western intensity, but he does not
exaggerate when he tells us that _he_ is the soldier wounded in battle,
_he_ is the galley slave, and _he_ is the hero come to the rescue, that
every human pulse is _his_ pulse, every fall _his_ fall, and every
moral victory _his_ triumph. The present writer recollects the moment
when the conviction of the common sisterhood of women was brought home
to her in a way never to be forgotten. She was driving from station
to station in London, and saw a drunken woman carried on a door. She
knew by the shock of pain and the tears the sight brought that the
woman was not outside of her, but was in some mysterious way part of
her--her very self. This was a new perception to the girl, and one
never again to be lost sight of. Such shocks of recognition probably
come to most of us, and when they come to the Greathearts of the world
we get our Elizabeth Frys, our Wilberforces, our Florence Nightingales.
Deeds of pity have been done through all the Christian ages, and,
indeed, wherever the human heart has had free play, but to feel pity
for another and to be aware, however dimly, that that other is, part
and lot, indissolubly bound up with ourselves--these are two things.
We venture to believe that this is the stage which the education of
mankind, as divinely conducted, has reached in our day. In other days
men did good for the love of God, or to save their own souls; they
acted uprightly because it behoved themselves to be just in all their
dealings; but the motives which stir us in our relation to each other
now are more intimate, tender, indefinable, soul-compelling. What the
issues will be when we have learned to con understandingly this new
page in the Book of Life we cannot foretell, but we may hope that the
Kingdom of God is coming upon us.
Studying reverently _these_ signs of the times, what indications do
we find for our guidance in the bringing up of children? The tender
sympathy of the child must be allowed to flow in ways of help and
kindness towards all life that anyway touches his. I once knew a little
girl of five, who came in from her walk under an obvious cloud of
distress. “What is the matter, H----?” she was asked. A quick little
“Nothing,” with the reticence of her family, was all that could be
got out of her for some minutes; but a caress broke her down, and,
in a passion of pity, she sobbed out, “A poor man, no home, no food,
no bed to lie upon!” Young as she was, the revelation of the common
life in humanity had come upon her; she was one with the beggar and
suffered with him. Children must, of course, be shielded from such
intense suffering, but woe to mother or nurse who would shield, by
systematically hardening, the child’s heart. This little girl should
have had the relief of helping, and then the pain of sympathy would not
have been too much for her. Whatever our own opinion of the world and
of human nature, let us be careful how we breathe the word “impostor”
into the ear of a child, until he is old enough to understand that if
the man is an impostor that does but make him the object of a deeper
pity and a wiser help--a help whose object is not to relieve but to
reform.
Again, children are open to vanity as to all other evil dispositions
possible to human nature. They must be educated to give and to help
without any notion that to do so is goodness on their part. It is very
easy to keep them in the attitude of mind natural to a child, that
to serve is promotion to the person who serves, for indeed he has no
absolute claim to be in a position to pour benefits upon another.
The child’s range of sympathy must be widened, his love must go out
to far and near, rich and poor; distress abroad and distress at home
should appeal to him equally; and always he should give some manner
of help _at real cost to himself_. When he is old enough, the object
lessons of the newspapers should be brought before him. He should
know that atrocities in Armenia, for instance, are the cause of real
heart-trouble in English homes; that there are cases of abstract
right and wrong for nations as for individuals, which admit of no
considerations of expediency; that to succour our neighbour in mortal
distress is such an occasion, and that he who has fallen among thieves
is therefore our neighbour, whether as a nation or as an individual.
Do not let us bring up our children in glass houses, for fear of
the ravages of pity upon their tender hearts. Let them know of any
distress which would naturally come before them, and let them ease
their own pain by alleviating in some way the sufferings they sorrow
for. Children were not given to us with infinite possibilities of love
and pity that we might choke the springs of pity and train them into
hardness of heart. It is our part, on the contrary, to prepare these
little ministers of grace for the larger and fuller revelation of the
kingdom of heaven that is coming upon us.
CHAPTER XXVI
_THE GREAT RECOGNITION_
Mr. Ruskin has done a great service to modern thought in interpreting
for us the harmonious and ennobling scheme of education and philosophy
recorded upon one quarter of what he calls the “Vaulted Book,” that is,
the Spanish Chapel attached to the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, in
Florence.
Many of our readers have probably studied under Mr. Ruskin’s guidance
the illuminating teaching of the frescoes which cover roof and walls;
but all will like to be reminded of the lessons they have pondered
with reverence and wonder. “The descent of the Holy Ghost is on the
left hand (of the roof) as you enter. The Madonna and Disciples are
gathered in an upper chamber: underneath are the Parthians, Medes,
Elamites, &c., who hear them speak in their own tongues. Three dogs are
in the foreground--their mythic purpose, to mark the share of the lower
animals in the gentleness given by the outpouring of the Spirit of
Christ.... On this and the opposite side of the Chapel are represented
by Simon Memmi’s hand, the teaching power of the Spirit of God and
the saving power of the Christ of God in the world, according to the
understanding of Florence in his time.
“We will take the side of intellect first. Beneath the pouring forth
of the Holy Spirit in the point of the arch beneath are the three
Evangelical Virtues. Without these, says Florence, you can have no
science. Without Love, Faith, and Hope--no intelligence. Under these
are the four Cardinal Virtues ... Temperance, Prudence, Justice,
Fortitude. Under these are the great Prophets and Apostles.... Under
the line of Prophets, as powers summoned by their voices are the mythic
figures of the seven theological or spiritual and the seven geological
or natural sciences; and under the feet of each of them the figure of
its Captain-teacher to the world.”
We hope our readers will continue to study Mr. Ruskin’s exposition of
the “Vaulted Book” in _Mornings in Florence_: it is wonderfully full
of teaching and suggestion. Our immediate concern is with the seven
mythic figures representing the natural sciences, and with the figure
of the Captain-teacher of each. First we have Grammar, a gracious
figure teaching three Florentine children; and, beneath, Priscian.
Next, Rhetoric, strong, calm, and cool; and below, the figure of Cicero
with a quite beautiful face. Next, Logic, with perfect pose of figure
and lovely countenance; and beneath her, Aristotle--intense keenness
of search in his half-closed eyes. Next, Music, with head inclined
in intent listening to the sweet and solemn strains she is producing
from her antique instrument; and underneath, Tubal Cain, not Jubal,
as the inventor of harmony--perhaps the most marvellous record that
Art has produced of the impact of a great idea upon the soul of a
man but semi-civilised. Astronomy succeeds, with majestic brow and
upraised hand, and below her, Zoroaster, exceedingly beautiful--“the
delicate Persian head made softer still by the elaborately wreathed
silken hair.” Next, Geometry, looking down, considering some practical
problem, with her carpenter’s square in her hand, and below her,
Euclid. And lastly, Arithmetic, holding two fingers up in the act of
calculating, and under her, Pythagoras wrapped in the science of number.
“The thoughts of God are broader than the measures of man’s mind.”
But here we have the breadth of minds so wide in the sweep of their
intelligence, so profound in their insight, that we are almost startled
with the perception that, pictured on these walls, we have indeed a
true measure of the thoughts of God. Let us glance for a moment at
our nineteenth century conception of education. In the first place,
we divide education into religious and secular. The more devout among
us insist upon religious education as well as secular. Many of us are
content to do without religious education altogether, and are satisfied
with what we not only _call_ secular but _make_ secular, in the sense
in which we understand the word, _i.e._, entirely limited to the uses
of this visible world. Many Christian people rise a little higher;
they conceive that even grammar and arithmetic may in some, not very
clear, way be used for God; but the Great Recognition, that God the
Holy Spirit is Himself, personally, the Imparter of knowledge, the
Instructor of youth, the Inspirer of genius, is a conception so far
lost to us that we should think it distinctly irreverent to conceive of
the divine teaching as co-operating with ours in a child’s arithmetic
lesson, for example. But the Florentine mind of the Middle Ages went
further than this: it believed, not only that the seven Liberal Arts
were fully under the direct outpouring of the Holy Ghost, but that
every fruitful idea, every original conception, whether in Euclid, or
grammar, or music, was a direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit,
without any thought at all as to whether the person so inspired named
himself by the name of God, or recognised whence his inspiration came.
All of these seven figures are those of persons whom we should roughly
class as Pagans, and whom we might be lightly inclined to consider as
outside the pale of the divine inspiration. It is truly difficult to
grasp the amazing boldness of this scheme of the education of the world
which Florence accepted in simple faith.
But we must not accept even an inspiring idea blindly. Were these
people of the Middle Ages right in this plan and conception of theirs?
Plato hints at some such thought in his contention that knowledge and
virtue are fundamentally identical, and that if virtue be divine in
its origin, so must knowledge be also. Ancient Egypt, too, was not in
the dark in this matter. “Pharaoh said unto his servants, can we find
such a one as this, a man in whom the Spirit of God is.” Practical
discernment and knowledge of every-day matters, and of how to deal
with emergencies, were not held by this king of Egypt to be teachings
unworthy of the Spirit of God. “The Spirit of God came upon him and he
prophesied among them,” we are told of Saul, and we may believe that
this is the history of every great invention and every great discovery
of the secrets of nature. “Then David gave to Solomon his son ... the
pattern of all that he had by the spirit, of the courts of the house of
the Lord.” We have here a suggestion of the source of every conception
of beauty to be expressed in forms of art. But it is not only with high
themes of science and art that the divine Spirit concerns Himself. It
sometimes occurs to one to wonder who invented, in the first place,
the way of using the most elemental necessaries of life. Who first
discovered the means of producing fire, of joining wood, of smelting
ores, of sowing seed, of grinding corn? We cannot think of ourselves
as living without knowing these things; and yet each one must have
been a great idea when it first made a stir in the mind of the man who
conceived it. Where did he get his first idea? Happily, we are told, in
a case so typical that it is a key to all the rest:--
“Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? Doth he open and break the
clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he
not cast abroad the fitches and scatter the cummin, and cast in the
principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place?
For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For
the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is
a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten
out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised;
because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel
of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. This also cometh forth
from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
working.”--Isa. xxviii. 24, &c.
In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of
practical every-day life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him,
her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother’s
key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her
_children_; the divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude,
but with each single child. Because He is infinite, the whole world is
not too great a school for this indefatigable Teacher, and because He
is infinite, He is able to give the whole of His infinite attention
for the whole time to each one of His multitudinous pupils. We do not
sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God
brings to each of us.
And what subjects are under the direction of this Divine Teacher?
The child’s faith and hope and charity--that we already knew; his
temperance, justice, prudence, and fortitude--that we might have
guessed; his grammar, rhetoric, logic, music, astronomy, geometry,
arithmetic--this we might have forgotten, if these Florentine teachers
had not reminded us; his practical skill in the use of tools and
instruments, from a knife and fork to a microscope, and in the sensible
management of all the affairs of life--these also come from the Lord,
which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. His God
doth instruct him and doth teach him. Let the mother visualise the
thought as an illuminated scroll about her new-born child, and let
her never contemplate any kind of instruction for her child, except
under the sense of the divine co-operation. But we must remember that
here as everywhere the infinite and almighty Spirit of God works
under limitations. Our co-operation appears to be the indispensable
condition of all the divine workings. We recognise this in what we call
spiritual things, meaning the things that have to do more especially
with our approaches to God; but the new thing to us is, that grammar,
for example, may be taught in such a way as to invite and obtain the
co-operation of the Divine Teacher, or in such a way as to exclude
His illuminating presence from the schoolroom. We do not mean that
spiritual virtues may be exhibited by the teacher and encouraged in the
child in the course of a grammar lesson; this is no doubt true, and
is a point to be remembered; but perhaps the immediate point is that
the teaching of grammar by its guiding ideas and simple principles,
the true, direct, and humble teaching of grammar, without pedantry and
without verbiage, is, we may venture to believe, accompanied by the
illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, of whom is all knowledge. The
contrary is equally true. Such teaching as enwraps a child’s mind in
folds of many words, which his thought is unable to penetrate, which
gives him rules, and definitions, and tables, in lieu of ideas--this is
teaching which excludes and renders impossible the divine co-operation.
This great recognition resolves that discord in our lives of which
most of us are, more or less, aware. The things of sense we are
willing to subordinate to the things of spirit; at any rate, we are
willing to endeavour ourselves in this direction. We mourn over our
failures and try again, and recognise that here lies the Armageddon
for every soul of man. But there is a debateable land. Is it not a
fact that the spiritual life is exigeant, demands our sole interest
and concentrated energies? Yet the claims of intellect--mind, of the
æsthetic sense--taste, press upon us urgently. We must think, we must
know, we must rejoice in and create the beautiful. And if all the
burning thoughts that stir in the minds of men, all the beautiful
conceptions they give birth to, are things apart from God, then we,
too, must have a separate life, a life apart from God, a division of
ourselves into secular and religious--discord and unrest. We believe
that this is the fertile source of the unfaith of the day, especially
in young and ardent minds. The claims of intellect are urgent; the
intellectual life is a necessity not to be foregone at any hazard. It
is impossible for these to recognise in themselves a dual nature;
a dual spirituality, so to speak; and, if there are claims which
definitely oppose themselves to the claims of intellect, these other
claims must go to the wall; and the young man or woman, full of promise
and power, becomes a free-thinker, an agnostic, what you will. But
once the intimate relation, the relation of Teacher and taught in all
things of the mind and spirit, be fully recognised, our feet are set in
a large room; there is space for free development in all directions;
and this free and joyous development, whether of intellect or heart,
is recognised as a Godward movement. Various activities, with unity
of aim, bring harmony and peace into our lives; more, this perception
of the intimate dealings of the divine Spirit with our spirit in the
things of the intellect, as well as in those of the moral nature, makes
us as keenly alive in the one case as in the other to the insidious
promptings of the spirit of evil; we become aware of the possibility
of intellectual sin as of moral sin; we perceive that in the region
of pure reason, also, it behoves us to see that we enter not into
temptation. We rejoice in the expansion of intellect and the expansion
of heart and the ease and freedom of him who is always in touch with
the inspiring Teacher, with Whom are infinite stores of learning,
wisdom, and virtue, graciously placed at our disposal.
Such a recognition of the work of the Holy Spirit as the Educator
of mankind, in things intellectual as well as in things moral and
spiritual, gives us “new thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven,” a
sense of harmony in our efforts and of acceptance of all that we are.
What stands between us and the realisation of this more blessed life?
This; that we do not realise ourselves as spiritual beings invested
with bodies,--living, emotional, a snare to us and a joy to us,--but
which are, after all, the mere organs and interpreters of our spiritual
intention. Once we see that we are dealing spirit with spirit with the
friend at whose side we are sitting, with the people who attend to
our needs, we shall be able to realise how incessant is the commerce
between the divine Spirit and our human spirit. It will be to us as
when one stops one’s talk and one’s thoughts in the spring-time, to
find the world full of bird-music unheard the instant before. In like
manner, we shall learn to make pause in our thoughts, and shall hear
in our intellectual perplexities, as well as in our moral, the clear,
sweet, cheering and inspiring tones of our spiritual Guide. We are not
speaking here of what is commonly called the religious life, or of
our definite approaches to God in prayer and praise; these things all
Christian people comprehend more or less fully; we are speaking only of
the intellectual life, the development of which in children is the aim
of our subjects and methods of instruction.
Supposing we are willing to make this great recognition, to engage
ourselves to accept and invite the daily, hourly, incessant
co-operation of the divine Spirit, in, to put it definitely and
plainly, the schoolroom work of our children, how must we shape our
own conduct to make this co-operation active, or even possible? We are
told that the Spirit is life; therefore, that which is dead, dry as
dust, mere bare bones, can have no affinity with Him, can do no other
than smother and deaden His vitalising influences. A first condition
of this vitalising teaching is that all the thought we offer to our
children shall be _living_ thought; no mere dry summaries of facts will
do; given, the vitalising idea, children will readily hang the mere
facts upon the idea as upon a peg capable of sustaining all that it is
needful to retain. We begin by believing in the children as spiritual
beings of unmeasured powers--intellectual, moral, spiritual--capable
of receiving and constantly enjoying intuitions from, the intimate
converse of, the divine Spirit. With this thought of a child to begin
with, we shall perceive that whatever is stale and flat and dull to us
must needs be stale and flat and dull to him, and also that there is
no subject which has not a fresh and living way of approach. Are we
teaching geography? The child discovers with the explorer, journeys
with the traveller, receives impressions new and vivid from some other
mind which is immediately receiving these impressions; not after they
have been made stale and dull by a process of filtering through many
intermediate minds, and, have found at last their way into a little
text-book. Is he learning history? his concern is not with strings of
names and of dates, nor with nice little reading-made-easy stories,
brought down, as we mistakenly say, to the level of his comprehension;
we recognise that his comprehension is at least equal to our own, and
that it is only his ignorance of the attendant circumstances we have to
deal with as luminously as we can. We recognise that history for him
is, to live in the lives of those strong personalities which at any
given time impress themselves most upon their age and country. This is
not the sort of thing to be got out of nice little history books for
children, whether “Little Arthur’s,” or somebody’s “Outlines.” We take
the child to the living sources of history--a child of seven is fully
able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch’s own words (translated),
without any diluting and with little explanation. Give him living
thought in this kind, and you make possible the co-operation of the
living Teacher. The child’s progress is by leaps and bounds, and
you wonder why. In teaching music, again, let him once perceive the
beautiful laws of harmony, the personality, so to speak, of Music,
looking out upon him from among the queer little black notes, and the
piano lesson has ceased to be drudgery.
It is unnecessary to go further into details; every subject has its
living way, with what Coleridge calls “its guiding idea” at the head,
and it is only as we discover this living way in each case that a
subject of instruction makes for the education of a child. No neat
system is of any use; it is the very nature of a system to grow stale
in the using; every subject, every division of a subject, every lesson,
in fact, must be brought up for examination before it is offered to
the child as to whether it is living, vital, of a nature to invite
the living Intellect of the universe. One more thing is of vital
importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not
too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and
if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to
soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the
books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the
constant stimulation of the child’s intellectual life. We need not say
one word about the necessity for living thought in the teacher; it is
only so far as he is intellectually alive that he can be effective in
the wonderful process which we glibly call “education.”
CHAPTER XXVII
_THE ETERNAL CHILD_
“The Waits!
Slowly they play, poor careful souls,
With wistful thoughts of Christmas cheer,
Unwitting how their music rolls
Away the burden of the year.
And with the charm, the homely rune,
Our thoughts like childhood’s thoughts are given,
When all our pulses beat in tune
With all the stars of heaven.”
--JOHN DAVIDSON.
In these levelling days we like to think that everybody has quite equal
opportunities in some direction; but Christmas joy, for example, is not
for every one in like measure. It is not only that those who are in
need, sorrow, or any other adversity do not sit down to the Christmas
feast of joy and thanksgiving; for, indeed, a Benjamin’s portion is
often served to the sorrowful. But it takes the presence of children
to help us to realise the idea of the Eternal Child. The Dayspring is
with the children, and we think their thoughts and are glad in their
joy; and every mother knows out of her own heart’s fulness what the
Birth at Bethlehem means. Those of us who have not children catch
echoes. We hear the wondrous story read in church, the waits chant the
tale, the church-bells echo it, and the years that are no more come
back to us, and our hearts are meek and mild, glad and gay, loving and
tender, as those of little children; but, alas, only for the little
while occupied by the passing thought. Too soon the dreariness of daily
living settles down upon us again, and we become a little impatient, do
we not, of the Christmas demand of joyousness.
But it is not so where there are children. The old, old story has all
its first freshness as we tell it to the eager listeners; as we listen
to it ourselves with their vivid interest it becomes as real and fresh
to us as it is to them. Hard thoughts drop away like scales from our
eyes; we are young once more with the children’s young life, which, we
are mysteriously made aware, is the life eternal. What a mystery it
is! Does not every mother, made wise unto salvation, who holds a babe
in her arms, feel with tremulous awe that that deep saying is true for
her also, “The same is my mother!” For the little child is the true St.
Christopher, in him is the light and life of Christ; and every birth
is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must humble
ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real
secret of the world’s progress--that every babe comes into the world
with an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents’ hearts.
That we, too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us
be as children, is the message that the new-born child never fails to
bear, however little we heed, or however soon we forget. It is well
that parents should ponder these things, for the child’s estate is a
holy one, and it is given to his parents to safeguard the little heir
of blessedness.
It is not possible to enter fully into so large a subject, but it
may be worth while to characterise two or three of the landmarks of
this child’s estate; for how shall we safeguard that which we do not
recognise, and how recognise that to which we have failed to give
deliberate attention. The note of childhood is, before all things,
humility. What we call innocence is probably resolvable into this
grace--repellent to the nature of man until he shall embrace it, and
then disclosing itself to him as divine. An old and saintly writer has
a luminous thought on this subject of humility. “There never was, nor
ever will be, but one humility in the whole world, and that is the
one humility of Christ, which never any man, since the fall of Adam,
had the least degree of but from Christ. Humility is one, in the same
sense and truth as Christ is one, the Mediator is one, Redemption is
one. There are not two Lambs of God that take away the sins of the
world. But if there was any humility besides that of Christ, there
would be something else besides Him that could take away the sins of
the world.”[20] Now, if there be but one humility in the whole world,
and that humility be the humility of Christ, and if our Lord pronounces
the little child also to be humble, is it not because of the indwelling
divinity, the glory in the child, which we call innocence?
Our common notion of humility is inaccurate. We regard it as a relative
quality. We humble ourselves to this one and that, bow to the prince
and lord it over the peasant. This is why the grace of humility does
not commend itself to us even in our most sincere moods. We feel that
this relative humility is hardly consistent with self-respect and due
independence of character. We have been taught to recognise humility
as a Christian grace, and therefore do not utter our protest; but
this misconception confuses our thought on an important subject. For
humility is absolute, not relative. It is by no means a taking of our
place among our fellows according to a given scale, some being above us
by many grades and others as far below. There is no reference to above
or below in the humble soul, which is equally humble before an infant,
a primrose, a worm, a beggar, a prince.
This, if we think of it, is the state natural to children. Every person
and thing commands their interest; but the person or thing in action
is deeply interesting. “May I go and make mud-pies with the boy in the
gutter?” prays the little prince, discerning no difference at all; and
the little boy in the gutter would meet him with equal frankness. What
is the secret of this absolute humility, humble alike towards higher or
lower, and unaware of distinctions? Our notion of a humble person is
one who thinks rather slightingly of himself, who says, deprecatingly,
“Oh, I can’t do this or that, you know, I’m not clever;” “I’m not cut
out for public work of any sort, I’ve no power or influence;” “Ah!
well, I hope he’ll be a better man than his father, I don’t think much
of myself anyway;” “Your children have great advantages, I wish mine
had such a mother, but I’m not a bit wise.” Such things are often said,
in all sincerity, without the least _soupçon_ of the “Uriah Heap”
sentiment. The thing we quarrel with is, that the speakers are apt to
feel that they have, anyway, the saving grace of humility. It is worth
while to reflect that there are no such deprecatory utterances ascribed
to the Example of that “great humility” which we are bound to follow;
and if there is not the slightest evidence of humility in this kind in
the divine life, which was all humility, we must re-cast our notions.
Children, too, never make deprecatory remarks; that is because they are
humble, and with the divine Example before us, and the example of our
children, we may receive it that humility does not consist in thinking
little of ourselves. It is a higher principle, a blessed state,
only now and then attained by us elders, but in which the children
perpetually dwell, and in which it is the will of God that we should
keep them.
Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think
of itself at all. It is a negative rather than a positive quality,
being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any
distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of
all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness
under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life. This is the
quality that makes heroes, and this is the quality that makes saints.
We are able to pray, but we are hardly able to worship or to praise,
to say, “_My_ soul doth magnify the Lord,” so long as in the innermost
chamber of our hearts we are self-occupied.
The Christian religion is, in its very nature, objective. It offers
for our worship, reverence, service, adoration and delight, a Divine
Person, the Desire of the world. Simplicity, happiness and expansion
come from the outpouring of a human heart upon that which is altogether
worthy. But we mistake our own needs, are occupied with our own falls
and our own repentances, our manifold states of consciousness. Our
religion is subjective first, and after that, so far as we are able,
objective. The order should rather be objective first, and after that,
so far as we have any time or care to think about ourselves, subjective.
Now the tendency of children is to be altogether objective, not at
all subjective, and perhaps that is why they are said to be first
in the kingdom of heaven. This philosophic distinction is not one
which we can put aside as having no bearing on everyday life. It
strikes the keynote for the training of children. In proportion as our
training tends to develop the subjective principle, it tends to place
our children on a lower level of purpose, character, and usefulness
throughout their lives: while so far as we develop the objective
principle, with which the children are born, we make them capable of
love, service, heroism, worship.
It is curious to observe how every function of our most complex nature
may have its subjective or its objective development. The child may
eat and drink and rest with the most absolute disregard of what he is
about, his parents taking care that these things are happily arranged
for him, but taking equal care that his attention shall not be turned
to the pleasures of appetite. But this is a point that we hardly need
to dwell upon, as thoughtful parents are agreed that children’s meals
should be so regularly pleasant and various that the child naturally
eats with satisfaction and thinks little or nothing of what he is
eating; that is, parents are careful that, in the matter of food,
children shall not be self-regardful.
Perhaps parents are less fully awake to the importance of regulating a
child’s sensations. We still kiss the place to make it well, make an
_obvious_ fuss if a string is uncomfortable or a crumpled rose-leaf
is irritating the child’s tender skin. We have forgotten the seven
Christian virtues and the seven deadly sins of earlier ages, and do
not much consider in the bringing up of our children whether the grace
of fortitude is developing under our training. Now fortitude has its
higher and its lower offices. It concerns itself with things of the
mind and with things of the body, and, perhaps, it is safe to argue
that fortitude on the higher plane is only possible when it has become
the habit of the nature on the lower plane. A baby may be trained in
fortitude, and is much the happier for such training. A child should be
taught that it is beneath him to take any notice of cold or heat, pain
or discomfort. We do not perceive the sensations to which we do not
attend, and it is quite possible to forget even a bad toothache in some
new and vivid interest. Health and happiness depend largely upon the
disregard of sensations, and the child who is encouraged to say, “I’m
so cold,” “I’m so tired,” “My vest pricks me,” and so on, is likely to
develop into the hysterical girl or the hypochondriac man; for it is an
immutable law that, as with our appetites, so with our sensations, in
proportion as we attend to them will they dominate us, until a single
sensation of slight pain or discomfort may occupy our whole field of
vision, making us unaware that there is any joy in living, any beauty
in the earth.
But these are the least of the reasons why a child should be trained
to put up with little discomforts and take no notice. The child, who
has been allowed to become self-regardful in the matter of sensations,
as of appetites, has lost his child’s estate, he is no longer humble;
he is in the condition of thinking about himself, instead of that
infinitely blessed condition of not being aware of himself at all. Nor
must we permit ourselves to make an exception to this rule in the case
of the poor little invalid. For him, far more than for the healthy
child, it is important that he should be trained to take no account of
his sensations; and many a brave little hero suffers anguish without
conscious thought, and therefore, of course, suffers infinitely less
than if he had been induced to dwell upon his pains. We say, induced,
because though a child may cry with sudden distress, he does not really
think about his aches and pains unless his thoughts be turned to his
ailments by those about him.
We are not advising any Spartan regimen. It is not permitted to us to
inflict hardness in order that the children may learn to endure. Our
care is simply to direct their consciousness from their own sensations.
The well-known anecdote of the man, who, before the days of chloroform,
had his leg cut off without any conscious sensations of pain, because
he determinately kept his mind occupied with other things, is an
extreme but instructive instance of what may be done in this direction.
At the same time, though the child himself be taught to disregard them,
his sensations should be carefully watched by his elders, for they
must consider and act upon the danger signals which the child himself
must be taught to disregard. But it is usually possible to attend to a
child’s sensations without letting him know they have been observed.
This, of the sensations, is only one example of the altruistic or
egoistic direction which the various operations of a child’s complex
nature may receive. His affections, again, are capable of receiving a
subjective or objective direction, according to the suggestions which
reach him from without. Every child comes into the world richly endowed
with a well of love, a fountain of justice; but whether the stream of
love shall flow to the right or the left, whether it shall be egoistic
or altruistic, depends on the child’s earliest training. A child who
is taught from the first the delights of giving and sharing, of loving
and bearing, will always spend himself freely on others, will love
and serve, seeking for nothing again; but the child who recognises
that he is the object of constant attention, consideration, love and
service, becomes self-regardful, self-seeking, selfish, almost without
his fault, so strongly is he influenced by the direction his thoughts
receive from those about him. So, too, of that other fountain, of
justice, with which every child is born. There again, the stream may
flow forth in either, but not in both, of the channels, the egoistic or
the altruistic. The child’s demand for justice may be all for himself,
or, from the very first, the rights of others may be kept before his
eyes. He may be taught to occupy himself with _his own rights and
other people’s duties_, and, if he is, his state of mind is easily
discernible by the catch-words often on his lips, “It’s a shame!” “It’s
not fair!” or he may, on the other hand, be so filled with the notion
of _his own duties and other people’s rights_, that the claims of
self slip quietly into the background. This kind cometh forth only by
prayer, but it is well to clear our thoughts and know definitely what
we desire for our children, because only so can we work intelligently
towards the fulfilment of our desire. It is sad to pray, and frustrate
the answer by our own action; but this is, alas, too possible.
During each coming festival of the Eternal Child, may parents ponder
how best to keep their own children in the blessed child-estate,
recollecting that the humility which Christ commends in the children
is what may be described, philosophically, as the objective principle
as opposed to the subjective, and that, in proportion as a child
becomes self-regardful in any function of his being, he loses the grace
of humility. This is the broad principle; the practical application
will need constant watchfulness, and constant efforts, especially
in holiday seasons, to keep friends and visitors from showing
their love for the children in any way that shall tend to develop
self-consciousness.
This, of humility, is not only a counsel of perfection, but is,
perhaps, the highest counsel of perfection; and when we put it to
parents, we offer it to those for whom no endeavour is too difficult,
no aim too lofty; to those who are doing the most to advance the
Kingdom of Christ.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] William Law.
BOOK II
_ESSAYS IN PRACTICAL EDUCATION_
CHAPTER I
_THE PHILOSOPHER AT HOME_
“He has _such_ a temper, ma’am!”
And there, hot, flurried, and, generally at her wits’ end, stood the
poor nurse at the door of her mistress’s room. The terrific bellowing
which filled the house was enough to account for the maid’s distress.
Mrs. Belmont looked worried. She went up wearily to what she well
knew was a weary task. A quarter of an hour ago life had looked very
bright--the sun shining, sparrows chirping, lilac and laburnum making
a gay show in the suburban gardens about; she thought of her three
nestlings in the nursery, and her heart was like a singing-bird giving
out chirps of thanks and praise. But that was all changed. The outside
world was as bright as ever, but she was under a cloud. She knew too
well how those screams from the nursery would spoil her day.
There the boy lay, beating the ground with fists and feet; emitting one
prodigious roar after another, features convulsed, eyes protruding, in
the unrestrained rage of a wild creature, so transfigured by passion
that even his mother doubted if the noble countenance and lovely smile
of her son had any existence beyond her fond imagination. He eyed his
mother askance through his tumbled, yellow hair, but her presence
seemed only to aggravate the demon in possession. The screams were more
violent; the beating of the ground more than ever like a maniac’s rage.
“Get up, Guy.”
Renewed screams; more violent action of the limbs!
“Did you hear me, Guy?” in tones of enforced calmness.
The uproar subsided a little, but when Mrs. Belmont laid her hand
on his shoulder to raise him, the boy sprang to his feet, ran into
her, head-foremost, like a young bull, kicked her, beat her with his
fists, tore her dress with his teeth, and would no doubt have ended
by overthrowing his delicate mother, but that Mr. Belmont, no longer
able to endure the disturbance, came up in time to disengage the raging
child and carry him off to his mother’s room. Once in, the key was
turned upon him, and Guy was left to “subside at his leisure,” said his
father.
Breakfast was not a cheerful meal, either upstairs or down. Nurse was
put out; snapped up little Flo, shook baby for being tiresome, until
she had them both in tears. In the dining-room, Mr. Belmont read the
_Times_ with a frown which last night’s debate did not warrant; sharp
words were at his tongue’s end, but, in turning the paper, he caught
sight of his wife’s pale face and untasted breakfast. He said nothing,
but she knew and suffered under his thoughts fully as much as if they
had been uttered. Meantime, two closed doors and the wide space between
the rooms hardly served to dull the ear-torturing sounds that came from
the prisoner.
All at once there was a lull, a sudden and complete cessation of sound.
Was the child in a fit?
“Excuse me a minute, Edward;” and Mrs. Belmont flew upstairs,
followed shortly by her husband. What was her surprise to see Guy
with composed features contemplating himself in the glass! He held in
his hand a proof of his own photograph which had just come from the
photographer’s. The boy had been greatly interested in the process; and
here was the picture arrived, and Guy was solemnly comparing it with
that image of himself which the looking-glass presented.
Nothing more was said on the subject; Mr. Belmont went to the City, and
his wife went about her household affairs with a lighter heart than
she had expected to carry that day. Guy was released, and allowed to
return to the nursery for his breakfast, which his mother found him
eating in much content and with the sweetest face in the world; no more
trace of passion than a June day bears when the sun comes out after
a thunderstorm. Guy was, indeed, delicious; attentive and obedient
to Harriet, full of charming play to amuse the two little ones, and
very docile and sweet with his mother, saying from time to time the
quaintest things. You would have thought he had been trying to make
up for the morning’s fracas, had he not looked quite unconscious of
wrong-doing.
This sort of thing had gone on since the child’s infancy. Now, a
frantic outburst of passion, to be so instantly followed by a sweet
April-day face and a sunshiny temper that the resolutions his parents
made about punishing or endeavouring to reform him passed away like
hoar-frost before the child’s genial mood.
A sunshiny day followed this stormy morning; the next day passed in
peace and gladness, but, the next, some hair astray, some crumpled
rose-leaf under him, brought on another of Guy’s furious outbursts.
Once again the same dreary routine was gone through; and, once again,
the tempestuous morning was forgotten in the sunshine of the child’s
day.
Not by the father, though: at last, Mr. Belmont was roused to give
his full attention to the mischief which had been going on under his
eyes for nearly the five years of Guy’s short life. It dawned upon
him--other people had seen it for years--that his wife’s nervous
headaches and general want of tone might well be due to this constantly
recurring distress. He was a man of reading and intelligence, in touch
with the scientific thought of the day, and especially interested in
what may be called the physical basis of character,--the interaction
which is ever taking place between the material brain and the
immaterial thought and feeling of which it is the organ. He had even
made little observations and experiments, declared to be valuable by
his friend and ally, Dr. Steinbach, the head physician of the county
hospital.
For a whole month he spread crumbs on the window-sill every morning at
five minutes to eight; the birds gathered as punctually, and by eight
o’clock the “table” was cleared and not a crumb remained. So far, the
experiment was a great delight to the children, Guy and Flo, who were
all agog to know how the birds knew the time.
After a month of free breakfasts: “You shall see now whether or no the
birds come because they see the crumbs.” The prospect was delightful,
but, alas! this stage of the experiment was very much otherwise to the
pitiful childish hearts.
“Oh, father, _please_ let us put out crumbs for the poor little birds,
they are so hungry!” a prayer seconded by Mrs. Belmont, met with very
ready acceptance. The best of us have our moments of weakness.
“Very interesting,” said the two savants. “Nothing could show more
clearly the readiness with which a habit is formed in even the less
intelligent of the creatures.”
“Yes, and more than that, it shows the automatic nature of the action
once the habit is formed. Observe, the birds came punctually and
regularly when there were no longer crumbs for them. They did not come,
look for their breakfast, and take sudden flight when it was not there,
but they settled as before, stayed as long as before, and then flew off
without any sign of disappointment. That is, they came, as we set one
foot before another in walking, just out of habit, without any looking
for crumbs, or conscious intention of any sort, a mere automatic or
machine-like action with which conscious thought has nothing to do.”
Of another little experiment Mr. Belmont was especially proud, because
it brought down, as it were, two quarries at a stroke; touched heredity
and automatic action in one little series of observations. Rover, the
family dog, appeared in the first place as a miserable puppy saved from
drowning. He was of no breed to speak of, but care and good living
agreed with him. He developed a handsome shaggy white coat, a quiet,
well-featured face, and betrayed his low origin only by one inveterate
habit; carts he took no notice of, but never a carriage, small or
great, appeared in sight but he ran yelping at the heels of the horses
in an intolerable way, contriving at the same time to dodge the whip
like any street Arab. Oddly enough, it came out through the milkman
that Rover came of a mother who met with her death through this very
peccadillo.
Here was an opportunity. The point was, to prove not only that the
barking was automatic, but that the most inveterate habit, even an
inherited habit, is open to cure.
Mr. Belmont devoted himself to the experiment: he gave orders that,
for a month, Rover should go out with no one but himself. Two pairs of
ears were on the alert for wheels; two, distinguished between carriage
and cart. Now Rover was the master of an accomplishment of which he
and the family were proud: he could carry a newspaper in his mouth.
Wheels in the distance, then, “Hi! Rover!” and Rover trotted along, the
proud bearer of the _Times_. This went on daily for a month, until at
last the association between wheels and newspaper was established, and
a distant rumble would bring him up--a demand in his eyes. Rover was
cured. By-and-by the paper was unnecessary, and “To heel! good dog!”
was enough when an ominous falling of the jaw threatened a return of
the old habit.
It is extraordinary how wide is the gap between theory and practice
in most of our lives. “The man who knows the power of habit has a key
wherewith to regulate his own life and the lives of his household, down
to that of the cat sitting at his hearth.” (_Applause._) Thus, Mr.
Belmont at a scientific gathering. But only this morning did it dawn
upon him that, with this key between his fingers, he was letting his
wife’s health, his child’s life, be ruined by a habit fatal alike to
present peace, and to the hope of manly self-possession in the future.
Poor man! he had a bad half-hour that morning on his way Citywards. He
was not given to introspection, but, when it was forced upon him, he
dealt honestly.
“I must see Steinbach to-night, and talk the whole thing out with him.”
* * * * *
“Ah, so; the dear Guy! And how long is it, do you say, since the boy
has thus out-broken?”
“All his life, for anything I know--certainly it began in his infancy.”
“And do you think, my good friend”--here the Doctor laid a hand on
his friend’s arm, and peered at him with twinkling eyes and gravely
set mouth--“do you think it possible that he has--a--_inherited_ this
little weakness? A grandfather, perhaps?”
“You mean me, I know; yes, it’s a fact. And I got it from my father,
and he, from his. We’re not a good stock. I know I’m an irascible
fellow, and it has stood in my way all through life.”
“Fair and softly, my dear fellow! go not so fast. I cannot let you
say bad things of my best friend. But this I allow; there are thorns,
bristles all over; and they come out at a touch. How much better for
you and for Science had the father cured all that!”
“As I must for Guy! Yes, and how much happier for wife, children, and
servants; how much pleasanter for friends. Well, Guy is the question
now. What do you advise?”
The two sat far into the night discussing a problem on the solution of
which depended the future of a noble boy, the happiness of a family.
No wonder they found the subject so profoundly interesting that _two_
by the church clock startled them into a hasty separation. Both ladies
resented this dereliction on the part of their several lords. They
would have been meeker than Sarah herself had they known that, not
science, not politics, but the bringing up of the children, was the
engrossing topic.
_Breakfast-time three days later. Scene, the dining-room._
NURSE _in presence of_ MASTER _and_ MISTRESS.
“You have been a faithful servant and good friend, both to us and the
children, Harriet, but we blame you a little for Guy’s passionate
outbreaks. Do not be offended, we blame ourselves more. Your share
of blame is that you have worshipped him from his babyhood, and have
allowed him to have his own way in everything. Now, your part of the
cure is, to do exactly as we desire. At present, I shall only ask you
to remember that, Prevention is better than cure. The thing for all of
us is to take precautions against even one more of these outbreaks.
“Keep your eye upon Guy; if you notice--no matter what the
cause--flushed cheeks, pouting lips, flashing eye, frowning forehead,
with two little upright lines between the eyebrows, limbs held stiffly,
hands, perhaps, closed, head thrown slightly back; if you notice any or
all of these signs, the boy is on the verge of an outbreak. Do not stop
to ask questions, or soothe him, or make peace, or threaten. Change his
thoughts. That is the one hope. Say quite naturally and pleasantly, as
if you saw nothing, ‘Your father wants you to garden with him,’ or,
‘for a game of dominoes;’ or, ‘your mother wants you to help her in the
store-room,’ or, ‘to tidy her work-box.’ Be ruled by the time of the
day, and how you know we are employed. And be quite sure we _do_ want
the boy.”
“But, sir, please excuse me, is it any good to save him from breaking
out when the passion is there in his heart?”
“Yes, Harriet, all the good in the world. Your master thinks that Guy’s
passions have become a habit, and that the way to cure him is to keep
him a long time, a month or two, without a single outbreak; if we can
manage that, the trouble will be over. As for the passion in his heart,
that comes with the outer signs, and both will be cured together. Do,
Harriet, like a good woman, help us in this matter, and your master and
I will always be grateful to you!”
“I’m sure, ma’am,” with a sob (Harriet was a soft-hearted woman, and
was very much touched to be taken thus into the confidence of her
master and mistress). “I’m sure I’ll do my best, especially as I’ve had
a hand in it; but I’m sure I never meant to, and, if I forget, I hope
you’ll kindly forgive me.”
“No, Harriet, you must not forget, any more than you’d forget to snatch
a sharp knife from the baby. This is almost a matter of life and death.”
“Very well, sir; I’ll remember, and thank you for telling me.”
* * * * *
Breakfast-time was unlucky; the very morning after the above talk,
Nurse had her opportunity. Flo, for some inscrutable reason, preferred
to eat her porridge with her brother’s spoon. Behold, quick as a flash,
flushed cheeks, puckered brow, rigid frame!
“Master Guy, dear,” in a quite easy, friendly tone (Harriet had
mastered her lesson), “run down to your father; he wants you to help
him in the garden.”
Instantly the flash in the eye became a sparkle of delight, the rigid
limbs were all active and eager; out of his chair, out of the room,
downstairs, by his father’s side in less time than it takes to tell.
And the face--joyous, sparkling, full of eager expectation--surely
Nurse had been mistaken this time? But no; both parents knew how
quickly Guy emerged from the shadow of a cloud, and they trusted
Harriet’s discretion.
“Well, boy, so you’ve come to help me garden? But I’ve not done
breakfast. Have you finished yours?”
“No, father,” with a dropping lip.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. You run up and eat your porridge and come
down as soon as you’re ready; I shall make haste, too, and we shall get
a good half-hour in the garden before I go out.”
Up again went Guy with hasty, willing feet.
“Nurse” (breathless hurry and importance), “I must make haste with my
porridge. Father wants me _directly_ to help him in the garden.”