CARE OF THE POWERS CONTINUED:--FEAR.
There is nothing in which children differ more than in their capacity
for Fear. But every child has it more or less,--or ought to have it: for
nothing can be made of a human being who has never experienced it. A
child who has never known any kind of fear can have no power of
Imagination;--can feel no wonder, no impulse of life, no awe or
veneration. Such a case probably does not exist, except in a condition
of idiotcy. A child who is called fearless, and who is congratulated
upon this,--who shows no shyness of strangers, who does not mind cold
water, or falls, or being in the dark, who runs after animals, and plays
with ugly insects, may yet cower under a starry sky, or tremble at
thunder, or be impressed for life by a mysterious dream. It is for the
parents to watch the degree and direction of an infant's fear, firmly
assured that whatever be this degree and direction, all may end well
under prudent care.
The least favourable case is that of the apathetic child. When it
appears indifferent to whatever may happen to it, and shrinks from
nothing, it must be as incapable of hope and enjoyment as of fear, and
there must be something amiss in its health,--in its nervous system; and
its health is what must be looked to first. It must be well nourished
and amused; its perceptive faculties must be exercised, and every sort
of activity must be encouraged. If this succeeds, and its feelings begin
to show themselves, fear will come with the rest; and then its education
in that respect must begin. But it must ever be carefully remembered
that fear often puts on the appearance of apathy,--especially in a proud
child. No creature is so intensely reserved as a proud and timid child:
and the cases are few in which the parents know anything of the agonies
of its little heart, the spasms of its nerves, the soul-sickness of its
days, the horrors of its nights. It hides its miseries under an
appearance of indifference or obstinacy, till its habitual terror
impairs its health, or drives it into a temper of defiance or
recklessness. I can speak with some certainty of this, from my own
experience. I was as timid a child as ever was born; yet nobody knew or
could know, the extent of this timidity; for though abundantly open
about everything else, I was as secret as the grave about this. I had a
dream at four years old which terrified me to such an excess that I
cannot now recal it without a beating of the heart. I could not look up
at the sky on a clear night; for I felt as if it was only just above the
tree tops, and must crush me. I could not cross the yard except at a
run, from a sort of feeling, with no real belief,--that a bear was
after me. The horrors of my nights were inexpressible. The main terror
however was a magic-lantern which we were treated with once a year, and
sometimes twice. We used to talk of this exhibition as a prodigious
pleasure; and I contrived to reckon on it as such: but I never saw the
white cloth, with its circle of yellow light, without being in a cold
perspiration from head to foot. One of the pictures on the slides was
always suppressed by my father, lest it should frighten the little
ones;--a dragon's head, vomiting flames. He little thought that a girl
of thirteen could be terrified by this: but when I was thirteen,--old
enough to be put in charge of some children who were to see the magic
lantern,--this slide was exhibited by one of my brothers among the rest.
I had found it hard enough to look and laugh before; and now I turned so
faint that I could not stand, but by grasping a chair. But for the
intensity of my shame, I should have dropped. Much of the benefit of
instruction was lost to me during all the years that I had masters: my
memory failed me when they knocked at the door, and I could never ask a
question, or get voice to make a remark. I could never play to my music
master, or sing with a clear voice but when I was sure nobody could hear
me. Under all this, my health was bad; my behaviour was dogged and
provoking, and my temper became for a time insufferable. Its
improvement began from the year when I first obtained some release from
habitual fear. During these critical years I misled everybody about me
by a habit of concealment on this one subject which I am sure I should
not now have strength for under any inducement whatever. Because I
climbed our apple tree, and ran along the top of a high wall, and took
great leaps, and was easily won by benevolent strangers, and because I
was never known to hint or own myself afraid, no one suspected that fear
was at the bottom of the immoveable indifference and apparently
unfeeling obstinacy by which I perplexed and annoyed everybody about me.
I make these confessions willingly, in the hope that some inexperienced
or busy parent may be awakened by them to observe whether the seeming
apathy of a child be really from indifference, or the outward working of
some hidden passion of fear.
Bold children are good and promising subjects; and it is a delightful
thing to a parent's heart to see an infant fairly trying its powers
against difficulties and obstacles--confronting nature in all seasons of
light and darkness, of sunshine and tempest, in the face of strangers
and friends alike, free and fearless. It is delightful to think how much
misery and embarrassment he is spared, by his happy constitution of
nerves and brain. But, while the proud parent sees in him the future
discoverer or sailor, or leader among men, it must be remembered that in
order to become great, in order to become truly a man at all, he must
learn and endure much that can be learned and endured only through fear,
and the conquest of it. That there is some fear in him is certain; and
the parent must silently search it out, and train it up into that awe
and modesty which are necessary to the high courage of a whole life. No
man or woman can be a faithful servant of Duty, qualified to live,
suffer, and die for it, who has not grown up in awe of something higher
than himself--in veneration of some powers greater than he can
understand; and this awe and veneration have in them a large element of
fear at the beginning. What this element is, in each case, the parents
must set themselves to understand. Too many think it their duty to make
a child afraid, if fear does not seem to come of itself: and too many do
this without thinking it their duty, from the spirit of opposition being
excited in themselves, from the experience of inconvenient fearlessness
in the child. I have known a tutor avow his practice of beating a bold
boy till he broke two canes over him, because the boy ought to learn
that he is under a power (a power of arm) greater than his own, and
must, through fear of it, apply himself to his appointed business. Such
inflictions make a boy reckless, or obstinate, or deceitful. And I have
seen far too many instances of irritable parents who have tried to
manage a high-spirited child by threats; and, the threats failing, by
blows, or shutting up in the dark, or hobgoblin prophecies, which have
created no real awe or obedience, but only defiance, or forced and
sullen submission. This will never do. A tender parent will never have
the heart to breed fear in a child, knowing that "fear hath torment." A
truly loving parent will know that it would be less unkind to bruise his
child's limbs, or burn its flesh, than to plant torturing feelings in
his mind. The most effectual way, for all purposes, is to discover the
fear that is already there, in order to relieve him from it, by changing
this weakness into a source of strength and comfort. What is it--this
fear that lies hidden in him? A boy who is not afraid of the dark, or of
a bull, or of a ghost, may tremble at the sight of a drunken man, or at
the hearing of an oath. A girl who is not afraid of a spider or a toad,
nor of thieves, nor of climbing ladders, may tremble at the moaning of
the wind in the chimney, or at a frown from her mother, or at entering a
sick chamber. Whatever be the fear, let the parents watch, carefully but
silently, till they have found it out: and, having found it out, let
them lead on the child to conquest, both by reason and by bringing such
courage as he has to bear on the weak point. In any case, whether of a
bold or a timid child, the only completely effectual training comes from
the parents' example. If the every day life of the parents shows that
they dread nothing but doing wrong, for either themselves or their
children, the fears of the most timid and of the boldest will alike take
this direction, sooner or later: and the courage of both will, with more
or less delay, become adequate to bear and do anything for conscience'
sake. If it be the clear rule and habit of an entire household to dread
and detest only one thing, the fear and dislike of every mind in the
household will become concentred upon that one thing, and every heart
will become stout to avoid and repel it. And if the one dreaded thing be
sin, it is well; for the courage of each and all will be perpetually
reinforced by the whole strength of the best faculties of every mind.
As for the case of the timid child,--let not the parent be disheartened,
for the noblest courage of man or woman has often grown out of the
excessive fears of the child. It is true, the little creature is
destined to undergo many a moment of agony, many an hour of misery, many
a day of discouragement; but all this pain may be more than compensated
for by the attainment of such a freedom and strength at last as may make
it feel as if it had passed from hell to heaven. Think what it must be
for a being who once scarcely dared to look round from fear of lights on
the ceiling or shadows on the wall, who started at the patter of the
rain, or the rustle of the birds leaving the spray, who felt suffocated
by the breeze and maddened by the summer lightning, to pass free,
fearless and glad through all seasons and their change,--all climes and
their mysteries and dangers;--to pass exhilarated through raging seas,
over glaring deserts, and among wild forests! Think what it must be for
a creature who once trembled before a new voice or a grave countenance,
and writhed under a laugh of ridicule, and lied, at the cost of deep
mental agony, to avoid a rebuke,--think what it must be to such a
creature to find itself at last free and fearless,--enjoying such calm
satisfaction within as to suffer nothing from the ridicule or the blame
of those who do not know his mind, and so thoroughly acquainted with the
true values of things as to have no dread of sickness or poverty, or the
world's opinion, because no evil that can befal him can touch his peace!
Think what a noble work it will be to raise your trembling little one to
such a condition as this, and you will be eager to begin the task at
once, and patient and watchful to continue it from day to day.
First, how to begin. The most essential thing for a timid infant is to
have an absolutely unfailing refuge in its mother. It may seem
unnecessary to say this. It may appear impossible that a mother's
tenderness should ever fail towards a helpless little creature who has
nothing but that tenderness to look to: but alas! it is not so. I know a
lady who is considered very sweet-tempered, and who usually is so--kind
and hospitable, and fond of her children. Her infant under six months
old was lying on her arm one day when the dessert was on the table; and
the child was eager after the bright glasses and spoons, and more
restless than was convenient. After several attempts to make it lie
quiet, the mother slapped it--slapped it hard. This was from an emotion
of disappointed vanity, from vexation that the child was not "good"
before visitors. If such a thing could happen, may we not fear that
other mothers may fail in tenderness,--in the middle of the night, for
instance, after a toilsome day, when kept awake by the child's
restlessness, or amidst the hurry of the day, when business presses, and
the little creature will not take its sleep? Little do such mothers know
the fatal mischief they do by impairing their child's security with
them. If they did, they would undergo anything before they would let a
harsh word or a sharp tone escape them, or indulge in a severe look or a
hasty movement. A child's heart responds to the tones of its mother's
voice like a harp to the wind; and its only hope for peace and courage
is in hearing nothing but gentleness from her, and experiencing nothing
but unremitting love, whatever may be its troubles elsewhere. Supposing
this to be all right, the mother will feel herself from the first the
depositary of its confidence;--a confidence as sacred as any other,
though tacit, and about matters which may appear to all but itself and
her infinitely small. Entering by sympathy into its fears, she will
incessantly charm them away, till the child becomes open to reason,--and
even afterwards; for the most terrible fears are precisely those which
have nothing to do with reason. She will bring it acquainted with every
object in the room or house, letting it handle in merry play everything
which could look mysterious to its fearful eyes, and rendering it
familiar with every household sound. Some of my worst fears in infancy
were from lights and shadows. The lamp-lighter's torch on a winter's
afternoon, as he ran along the street, used to cast a gleam, and the
shadows of the window frames on the ceiling; and my blood ran cold at
the sight, every day, even though I was on my father's knee, or on the
rug in the middle of the circle round the fire. Nothing but compulsion
could make me enter our drawing-room before breakfast on a summer
morning; and if carried there by the maid, I hid my face in a chair that
I might not see what was dancing on the wall. If the sun shone (as it
did at that time of day,) on the glass lustres on the mantel-piece,
fragments of gay colour were cast on the wall; and as they danced when
the glass drops were shaken, I thought they were alive,--a sort of imps.
But, as I never told any body what I felt, these fears could not be met,
or charmed away; and I grew up to an age which I will not mention before
I could look steadily at prismatic colours dancing on the wall. Suffice
it that it was long after I had read enough of Optics to have taught
any child how such colours came there. Many an infant is terrified at
the shadow of a perforated night-lamp, with its round spaces of light.
Many a child lives in perpetual terror of the eyes of portraits on the
walls,--or of some grotesque shape in the pattern of the paper-hangings.
Sometimes the terror is of the clack of the distant loom, or of the
clink from the tinman's, or of the rumble of carts under a gateway, or
of the creak of a water-wheel, or the gush of a mill-race. Everything is
or may be terrifying to a timid infant; and it is therefore a mother's
charge to familiarise it gently and playfully with everything that it
can possibly notice, making sport with all sights, and inciting it to
imitation of all sounds--from the drone of the pretty bee to the awful
cry of the old clothes-man;--from the twitter of the sparrows on the
roof to the toll of the distant church bell.
It is a matter of course that no mother will allow any ignorant person
to have access to her child who will frighten it with goblin stories, or
threats of the old black man. She might as well throw up her charge at
once, and leave off thinking of household education altogether, as
permit her child to be exposed to such maddening inhumanity as this. The
instances are not few of idiotcy or death from terror so caused.
While thus preventing or scattering fears which arise from the
imagination, both parents should be constantly using the little
occasions which are always arising, for exercising their child's
courage. The most timid children have always courage in one direction or
another. While I was trembling and fainting under magic-lanterns and
street cries, I could have suffered any pain and died any death without
fear, the circumstances being fairly laid before me. Let the timid child
be made hardy in its play by example and encouragement. Let it be
cheered on to meet necessary pain without flinching,--the taking out a
thorn, or pulling out a tooth. Let it early hear of real heroic
deeds,--hear them spoken of with all the affectionate admiration with
which we naturally speak of such acts. If a life is saved from fire or
drowning, let the children hear of it as a joyful fact. Let them hear
how steadily William Tell's little son stood, for his father to shoot
through the apple. Let them hear how the good man who was on his way to
be burnt for his religion took off his shoes, and gave them to a
barefooted man who came to stare at him, saying that the poor man wanted
the shoes, but he could do without them now. Let them hear of the other
good man who was burnt for his religion, and who promised some friends,
in danger of the same fate, that he would clasp his hands above his head
in the midst of the fire, if he found the pain so bearable that he did
not repent, and who did lift up his arms and join them after his hands
were consumed,--so giving his friends on the hill-side comfort and
strength. If any child of your acquaintance does a brave thing, or bears
pain cheerfully, let your children hear of it as a good and happy thing.
Above all, let them see, as I said before, all their lives long, that
_you_ fear nothing but wrong-doing,--neither tempests nor comets, nor
reports of famine or fever, nor the tongues of the quarrelsome, nor any
other of the accidents of life,--no pain, in short, but pain of
conscience,--and the same spirit will strengthen in them. Their fear
will follow the direction of yours; their courage will come in sympathy
with yours; and their minds will fill more and more with thoughts of
hope and heroism which must in time drive out such remaining terrors as
cannot be met by fact or reason.
In this fearlessness of yours is included fearlessness for your
children, as well as for yourselves. While their limbs are soft and
feeble, of course you must be strength and safety to them: but when they
arrive at a free use of their limbs and senses, let them fully enjoy
that free use. We English are behind almost every nation in the strength
and hardihood of the race of children. In America, I have seen little
boys and girls perched in trees overhanging fearful precipices, and
crawling about great holes in bridges, while the torrent was rushing
below; and I could not learn that accidents from such practices were
ever heard of. In Switzerland I have seen mere infants scrambling among
the rocks after the goats,--themselves as safe as kids, from the early
habit of relying on their own powers. In Egypt and Nubia I have seen
five-year old boys poppling about like ducks in the rapids of the Nile,
while some, not much older, were not satisfied with hauling and pushing,
as our boat ascended the cataract, but swam and dived, to heave off her
keel from sunken rocks. Such children are saved from danger, as much as
from fear, by an early use of all the powers they have: and it would be
a happy thing for many an English child if its parents were brave enough
to encourage it to try how much it can do with its wonderful little
body. Of this, however, we shall have to say more under another head.