CARE OF THE POWERS:--WILL.
While the bodily powers of the infant are nourished and preserved by
observing Nature, as pointed out in the last chapter, the powers of the
mind are growing from day to day. When an infant has once been pleased
with the glitter of the sun upon the brass warming-pan, or with the
sound of a rattle, it will kick and shake its little arms, and look
eager, the next time it sees the rattle and the warming-pan. And having
once remembered, it will remember more every day. Every day it will give
signs of Hope and Desire. Will shows itself very early. Fear has to be
guarded against, and Love to be cherished, from the first days that mind
appears. It is the highest possible privilege to the child if the
parents know how to exercise its power of Conscience soon enough, so as
to make it sweet and natural to the young creature to do right from its
earliest days. Let us see how these things may be.
How strong is the Will of even a very young infant! How the little
creature, if let alone, will labour and strive after anything it has set
its mind upon! How it cries and struggles to get the moon; and tumbles
about the floor, as soon as it can sprawl, to accomplish any wish! And,
if ill-trained, how pertinaciously it will refuse to do anything it
ought! How completely may the wills of a whole party of grown people be
set at nought by the self-will of a baby whose powers are allowed to run
riot! It is exceedingly easy to mismanage such cases, as we all see
every day: but it is also very easy to render this early power of Will a
great blessing.
The commonest mistake is to indulge the child's self-will, as the
easiest course at the moment. Immediate peace and quiet are sought by
giving the child whatever it clamours for, and letting it do whatever it
likes in its own way. We need not waste words on this tremendous
mistake. Everybody knows what a spoiled child is; and nobody pretends to
stand up for the method of its education. I think quite as ill of the
opposite mistake--of the method which goes by the name of breaking the
child's will; a method adopted by some really conscientious parents
because they think religion requires it. When I was in America, I knew a
gentleman who thought it his first duty to break the wills of his
children; and he set about it zealously and early. He was a clergyman,
and the President of an University: the study of his life had been the
nature and training of the human mind: and the following is the way he
chose--misled by a false and cruel religion of Fear--to subdue and
destroy the great faculty of Will. An infant of (I think) about eleven
months old was to be weaned. A piece of bread was offered to the babe;
and the babe turned away from it. Its father said that it was necessary
to break down the rebellious will of every child for once; that if done
early enough, once would suffice; and that it would be right and kind to
take this early occasion in the instance of this child. The child was
therefore to be compelled to eat the bread. A dressmaker in the house
saw the process go on through the whole day; and became so dreadfully
interested that she could not go away at night till the matter was
finished. Of course, the bit of bread became more and more the subject
of disgust, and then of terror to the infant, the more it was forced
upon its attention. Hours of crying, shrieking and moaning were followed
by its being shut up in a closet. It was brought out by
candlelight--stretched helpless across the nurse's arms, its voice lost,
its eyes sunk and staring, its muscles shrunk, its appearance that of a
dying child. It was now near midnight. The bit of bread was thrust into
the powerless hand; no resistance was offered by the unconscious
sufferer; and the victory over the evil powers of the flesh and the
devil was declared to be gained. The dressmaker went home, bursting with
grief and indignation, and told the story: and when the President went
abroad the next morning, he found the red brick walls of the university
covered with chalk portraits of himself holding up a bit of bread before
his babe. The affair made so much noise that he was, after some time,
compelled to publish a justification of himself. This justification
amounted to what was well understood throughout; that he conscientiously
believed it his duty to take an early opportunity to break the child's
will, for its own sake. There remained for his readers the old wonder
where he could find in the book of Glad Tidings so cruel a contradiction
of that law of love which stands written on every parent's heart.
How much easier is the true and natural method for controlling the young
Will! Nature points out that the true method is to control the Will, not
by another person's Will, but by the other faculties of the child
itself. When the child wills what is right and innocent, let the faculty
work freely. When it wills what is wrong and hurtful, appeal to other
faculties, and let this one sleep; excite the child's attention; engage
its memory, or its hope, or its affection. If the infant is bent on
having something that it ought not, put the forbidden object out of
sight, and amuse the child with something else. Avoid both indulgence
and opposition, and a habit of docility will be formed by the time the
child becomes capable of deliberate self-control. This natural method
being followed, it is curious to see how early the power of
self-control may be attained. I watched one case of a child endowed with
a strong Will who, well trained, had great power of self-government
before she could speak plain. She was tenderly reared, and indulged in
her wishes whenever they were reasonable, and cheerfully amused and
helped whenever her desires were disappointed. One day I had just begun
to show her a bright new red pocket-book full of pictures when she was
called to her dinner. She did not want her dinner, and begged to see the
pocket-book; begged it once--twice--and was about to beg it a third
time, when I ventured to put to the proof her power of self-denial. I
put the case before her as it appeared to me, fairly saying that I could
not show her the pocket-book till five in the afternoon. Showing her
what I thought the right of the matter, I asked her whether she would
now go to her dinner. She stood, with the pocket-book in her hand, for
some seconds in deep thought; then looked up at me with a bright face,
said graciously "I will;" put the gay plaything into my lap, and ran off
to her dinner. The looking forward till five o'clock and the pleasure of
that hour fixed the effort in her mind, and made the next easier. It is
clear that a child early subject to oppression and opposition in matters
of the Will could not arrive thus betimes and naturally at
self-government like this, but must have many perverse and painful
feelings to struggle with, in addition to the necessary conflict with
himself.
A parent who duly appreciates the great work that every human being has
to do in attaining self-government, will assist the process from the
very first, by the two great means in his power--by the aid of Habit,
and of a government of love instead of fear. It is really due to the
feebleness of a child to give it the aid and support of habit in what it
has to do and avoid. By regularity in the acts of its little life, in
its sleeping and feeding, and walking and times of play, a world of
conflict and wilfulness is avoided, and the will is quietly trained, day
by day, to submission to circumstances; life goes on with the least
possible wear and tear; and a continually strengthening power is
obtained over all the faculties. Among the children entering upon school
life, and men and women upon any sphere of duty whatever, a great
difference as to efficiency will be found between those who always have
to bring their Will to bear expressly on the business of the time,
unaided by habit, and those whose lives and powers have been, as one may
say, economised by their having lived under that discipline of time and
circumstance which is the gentle and natural education of the human
Will. It is true, this mechanical kind of discipline can never be more
than auxiliary. It can never stand in the place of the deep internal
principle by which alone the mightiest movements of the human will are
actuated. It can only husband a man's powers for his ordinary duties,
and not of itself prepare him for the great crises of life. It can only
aid him in his everyday course, and not strengthen him, when the
agonising hour comes, to surrender love, and hope, and peace, at the
call of duty, or to encounter outrage and death for truth's sake. But we
are now considering the education of the infant man; man at that stage
when our chief concern is with whatever is auxiliary to that great aim
of perfection which lies far in the future.
Above all things it is important that the parental administration should
be one of love and not of fear. There can be no healthful growth of the
Will under the restraints of fear. The fact is, the Will is not trained
at all in any frightened person.
The actions may be conformed to the Will of the tyrant; but the Will is
running riot in secret all the time--unless, indeed, it be entirely
crushed. But how vigorously it grows under a government of love! Look at
the difference between a slave-owner, whose people are driven by the
lash, and an employer whose people are ready to live and die for him:
how languidly and shabbily is the work done in the first case, and how
heartily and efficiently in the last! And it is with the young child as
with the grown man. A child who lives in the fear of punishment has half
its faculties absorbed by that fear, and becomes a feeble little
creature, incapable of governing itself; while a mere babe who is
cheered and led on in its good efforts by smiles of love and tones of
tenderness becomes strong to govern its passions, and to brush away its
tears; and patient to bear pain; and brave to overcome difficulty;
becomes blessed, in short, with a healthful and virtuous Will. I know
nothing more touching than the efforts of self-government of which
little children are capable, when the best parts of their nature are
growing vigorously under the light and warmth of parental love. Mrs.
Wesley might pride herself on so breaking the wills of her children by
fear as that the youngest in arms learned immediately "to cry softly;"
but there was every danger that the early cowed Will would sooner or
later start up in desperate rebellion, and claim a freedom which it
would be wholly unable to manage. How much safer, and how infinitely
more beautiful is the self-control of the little creature who stifles
his sobs of pain because his mother's pitying eye is upon him in tender
sorrow! or that of the babe who abstains from play, and sits quietly on
the floor because somebody is ill; or that of a little hero who will ask
for physic if he feels himself ill, or for punishment if he knows
himself wrong, out of confidence in the tender justice of the rule under
which he lives! I have known a very young child slip over to the cold
side of the bed on a winter's night, that a grown-up sister might find
a warm one. I have known a boy in petticoats offer his precious new
humming-top to a beggar child. I have known a little girl submit
spontaneously to hours of irksome restraint and disagreeable employment
merely because it was right. Such Wills as these--so strong and yet so
humble, so patient and so dignified--were never impaired by fear, but
flourished thus under the influence of love, with its sweet incitements
and holy supports.