CARE OF THE POWERS CONTINUED:--PATIENCE.
Some may be surprised to find Patience spoken of among the Powers of
Man. They have been accustomed to consider it a passive quality, and not
as involving action of the mind. They do not find it in any catalogue of
the organs of the brain, and have always supposed it a mere negation of
the action of those organs.
But patience is no negation. It is the vigorous and sustained action,
amidst outward stillness, of some of the most powerful faculties with
which the human being is endowed; and primarily of its powers of
Firmness and Resistance. The man who holds up his head, quiet and
serene, through a season of unavoidable poverty or undeserved disgrace,
is exercising his power of Firmness as vigorously as the general who
pursues his warfare without change of purpose through a long campaign;
and a lame child, strong and spirited, who sits by cheerfully to see his
companions leaping ditches, is or has been engaged in as keen a combat
with opposing forces as a couple of pugilists. In the case of the
patient, the resolution and resistance are brought to bear against
invisible enemies, which are the more, and not the less, hard to
conquer from their assaults being made in silence, and having to be met
in the solitude of the inner being. The man patient under poverty or
disgrace has to carry on an active interior conflict with his baffled
hope, his grieved domestic affections, his natural love of ease and
enjoyment, his mortified ambition, his shaken self-esteem, and his
yearning after sympathy. And the lame child among the leapers has to
contend alone with most of these mortifications, and with his
stimulating animal spirits besides. Nothing can be further from
passiveness than his state in his hour of trial, though he may sit
without moving a muscle. He is putting down the swellings of his little
heart, and taming his instincts, and rousing his will, and searching out
noble supports among his highest ideas and best feelings--putting on his
invisible armour as eagerly as any hero whom the trumpet calls from his
rest.
Patience is no more like passiveness in its smallest exercises than in
these great ones. Look at the ill-nursed passive infant,--how it hangs
over its mother's shoulder, or slouches on her arm,--its eye dull, its
face still, its movements slow: see how, when old enough to amuse
itself, it sits on the floor by the hour together, jangling a bunch of
keys, lulling itself with that noise, instead of making any of its own!
Contrast with this the lively infant beginning to be trained to
patience. It does not cry for its food or toy, as it used to do, but
its limbs are all active, it fidgets, and it searches its mother's face
for hope and encouragement not to cry. And when more advanced, how busy
is its little soul while it makes no noise, and postpones its play for
the sake of the baby. If it sits at watch beside the cradle, how it
glances about to warn away the kitten, or puts its finger on its lips if
the door opens, or watches so intently for baby's eye-lids to open as to
start when it jerks its hand. If waiting for play till baby has had its
meal, how it stands at its mother's knee, making folds in her
gown,--see-sawing its body perhaps, and fetching deep sighs, to throw
off its impatience, but speaking no word--making no complaint till baby
has had its dues. And when its turn is come, baby being laid down, what
a spring into the lap, what a clasp of the neck is there! while the
child with the keys has to be lifted from the floor like a bag of sand.
As patience includes strong action of the mind, the vivacious child has
a much better chance of becoming patient than the passive one;--so far
are passiveness and patience from being alike. Patience is indeed the
natural first step in that self-government which is essential to the
whole purpose of human life. It is impossible to overrate the importance
of this self-government; and therefore it is impossible to overrate the
importance of this first step,--the training to patience. And the
vivacious child is happy above the apathetic one in being fitted to
enter at once upon the training from the earliest moment that the will
is naturally capable of action.
And now about this training.
It must begin before the little creature is capable of voluntary effort.
The mother must take its little troubles upon herself, and help it all
she can, till the habit of patience is completely formed;--which will be
long. She must not only comfort it in its restlessness and inability to
wait, but beguile it of its impatience. She must amuse it, and turn away
its attention from its grievance, or its object of desire,--never
yielding what it ought not to have, and always indulging it where there
is no reason for denial. In time, the infant will learn that it can
wait, and in what cases it must wait; and from that time, its work of
self-control begins. I have before my mind's eye a little child of
sensitive nerves and strong will who early showed by her loud impatient
cry how she might suffer in after life, if the habit of patience were
not timely formed. It was timely formed. She died of scarlet fever
before she was four years old; and the self-command that little creature
showed amidst the restlessness of her fever and the grievous pain of her
sore-throat, was a comfort which will remain for ever to those who mourn
her. It of course lessened her own suffering, and it cheered the heart
of her wise mother with a joy which lights up her memory. Here the great
condition was fulfilled which is essential to the work;--the parents
are themselves patient and consistent. Self-control can never be taught
without example. From the beginning an infant can perceive whether the
moral atmosphere around it is calm or stormy, and will naturally become
calm or stormy accordingly. If its mother scolds the servant, if its
father gets into a passion with the elder children, if there is
disturbance of mind because a meal is delayed,--if voices grow loud and
angry in argument, or there is gloom in the face or manner of any grown
person who has a headache, how is the infant to learn to wait and be
cheerful under its little troubles?--these little troubles being to it
misfortunes as great as it is at all able to bear.
I would not cite the old quaker discipline of families as a pattern of
what is to be wished in all things. There was too often a want of
tenderness, and of freedom and of mirth--such as children, need, and as
are quite compatible with the formation of a habit of patience: but in
that one respect,--of patience,--how admirable are the examples that
many of us have seen! The cultivation of serenity being a primary
religious duty with the parents, how the spirit and the habit spread
through the children! Before they could understand that the grown people
about them were waiting for the guidance of "the Inward Witness," they
saw and felt that the temper was that of humble waiting; and they too
learned to wait. When set up on a high stool from which they could not
get down, and bid to sit still without toys for a prescribed time, how
many a restless child learned to subdue his inward chafing, and to sit
still till the hand of the clock showed that he might ask to come down!
This exercise was a preparation for the silent meeting, where there
would be less to amuse his eyes, and no one could tell how long he might
have to sit; and how well the majority of quaker children went through
this severer test! Few of us will approve of this kind of discipline. We
think it bad, because unnatural. We think that the trials of a child's
patience which come of themselves every day are quite enough for its
powers, and, if rightly used, for its training; but the instance shows
how powerful is the example of the parents and the habit of the
household in training little children to self-control.
Yes,--the little occasions of every day are quite enough: and if they
were not, little could be gained, and much would be lost, by inventing
more. There is tyranny in making a lively child sit on a high stool with
nothing to do, even though the thing is ordained for its own good; and
every child has a keen sense of tyranny. The patience taught by such
means cannot be thorough. It cannot be an amiable and cheerful patience,
pervading the whole temper. It is much better to use those natural
occasions which it is clear that the parent does not create. There is
seldom or never a day when something does not happen to irritate a
child;--it is hungry, or thirsty, or tired; it gets a tumble, or
dislikes cold water, or wants to be petted when its mother is busy; or
breaks a toy, or the rain comes when it wants to go out, or pussy runs
away from play, or it has an ache or a pain somewhere. All these are
great misfortunes for the time to a little child: and if it can learn by
degrees to bear them, first by being beguiled of them, and then by being
helped through them, and at last by sustaining them alone, there is
every hope that the severe trials of after life will be sustained with
less effort than is required by these trifles now. A four-year-old child
that can turn away and find amusement for itself when its mother cannot
attend to it,--and swallow its tears when the rain will not let it sow
its garden seeds, and stifle its sobs when it has knocked its elbow, and
forgive any one who has broken its toy, and lie still without
complaining when it is ill, gives the fairest promise of being able to
bear serenely the severest calamities of after life. For my own part, I
feel that no spectacle of fortitude in man or woman is more animating
and touching than what may be seen in little children, who have
seriously entered upon the great work of self-government,--sustained by
wise and tender parental help. Some time ago, I was in the house with a
little girl of three years old, whose throat was one day very sore. She
tried in vain to get down some dinner,--cried, was amused, and went to
sleep. On waking, some of the soft rice-pudding from our table was
tried; but the throat was now worse, and she cried again. To amuse her,
she was set up at our table in her little chair, between her mama and
me. I saw the desperate efforts she was making to keep down her sobs:
and when she looked over to her father, and said softly "I mean to be
dood," it was too much for others besides me. Her tender father helped
her well through it. He told her a long long story about something he
had seen that morning; and as her large eyes were fixed on his face, the
sobs subsided, and she became absorbed in what he was telling her. That
child was as truly an object of reverence to us as any patient sufferer
of mature age.
The finest opportunity for the cultivation of patience in a household is
where there are many children,--boys and girls,--with no great
difference of years between them. Here, in the first place, the parents
have need of all the faith and patience they have, to bear hopefully
with the impatience of some of their children. There are moments, hours,
and days, in the best households, when the conscientious and tender
mother feels her heart rent by the spectacle of the quarrels of her
children. It is a truth which had better be at once fully admitted, that
where there are many children nearly approaching each other in age,
their wills must clash, their passions become excited, and their
affections be for the time over-borne. When a mother sees her children
scratch and strike, when her ear catches the bitter words of passion
between brothers, her heart stands still with grief and dread. But she
must be comforted. All may be well if she overrules this terrible
necessity as she may. She must remember that the strength of will thus
shown is a great power for use in the acquisition of patience. She must
remember that the odiousness of passion is not yet evident to her
children, as it is to her. She must remember how small is the moral
comprehension of a child, and therefore how intense are its desires, and
how strong is the provocation when those desires are thwarted. She must
remember that time and enlargement of views are what children want to
make them men: and that time and enlargement are sure to come to these
young creatures, and make men of them, if the parents do their part. Her
part to-day is to separate the children who cannot agree; to give time
and opportunity for their passions to subside, the desire of the moment
to pass away, and the affections and the reason to be aroused. She must
obtain their confidence apart, and bring them together again when they
can forgive and agree. If she finds that such troubles enable her to
understand her children better, and reveal their own minds to
themselves, and if such failures help them to a more careful self-rule,
the event may be well worth the pain.
I have said that there are few or no large families of children in which
quarrelling does not sometimes occur. But if the quarrelling does not
early cease--if the liability does not pass away like the diseases of
childhood, it is sadly plain that the fair opportunity of cultivating a
habit of patience has been lost or misused. It must be early and
watchfully used. Every member of the household must be habituated,
constantly and as a privilege, to wait and forbear for the sake of
others. The father takes the lead--as he ought to do in all good things.
His children see in him, from year to year, an example of patient
toil--patient and cheerful toil--whether he be statesman, merchant,
farmer, shop-keeper, artizan or labourer. The mother comes next,--seen
to wait patiently on her sick or helpless infant, and to be forbearing
with servants and children, enduring in illness and fatigue, and
cheerful through everything. Then come the elder children, who must have
been long and steadily trained, through early self-control, to wait, not
only in tenderness on the helpless infant, but in forbearance on the
weakness of those younger and frailer than themselves. Then come those
of the middle age, who have to wait in such patience as they are capable
of under their own personal trials, and the will and pleasure of their
parents and elders. And lastly come the little ones, who are likely to
have plenty of opportunity for self-command amidst the business and
chances of a large family, and the variety of influences ever at work
therein. So various a household is a complete little world to
children--the discipline of which is no small privilege as being
preparatory to that of the larger world upon which they must enter after
their habits of mind are formed. To the parents the advantage is
inestimable of having this little world, not only under their eye, so
that they may timely see how their children are likely to fare morally
in the great world of adult life, but under their hand, so that they
can, according to their discretion, adapt its influences to the needs of
their charge.
Some households,--and not a few--are made a harsh school, or a sweet
home of Patience, by the presence of some infirmity of body or mind in
some one member. This is a case so frequent, and the circumstance is so
important, that I must devote my next pages to it.