CARE OF THE POWERS.--VENERATION.
Among the great blessings which are shared by the whole human race, one
of the chief is its universal power of veneration.
I call this a universal power, because there is no human being, (except
the idiot) in whom it is not inherent from his birth: and I think I may
say, that there is none in whom it does not exist, more or less, till
his death. Unhappy influences may check or pervert it: but there is no
reason to believe that it can be utterly destroyed. The grinning
scoffer, who laughs at everything serious, who despises every man but
himself, and who is insensible to the wonders and charms of nature, yet
stands in awe of something,--if it be nothing better than rank and show,
or brute force, or the very power of contempt in others which he values
so much in himself. Send for such an one into the presence of the Queen,
or bring him to the bar of the House of Commons, or ask him to dinner in
a sumptuous palace, and, however far gone he may be in contempt, he will
be awe-struck. Set him down face to face with a man who makes game of
everything he does not understand, (and that will be almost everything
that exists) and he will have a respect for that man. If you can bring
his mind into contact with any objects low enough to excite his degraded
faculty of veneration, you will find that the faculty is still there. It
appears to be indeed inextinguishable.
We have, as usual, two things to take heed to in regard to this great
and indispensable power of the mind. First, to take care that the power
neither runs riot, nor is neglected. And next, to direct it to its
proper objects.
I. The faculty, like all others, is of unequal strength in different
people;--in children, as well as in grown persons. We see one man who
seems to have no self-reliance or freedom of action in anything; whose
life is one long ague fit of superstition, from that cowardly dread of
God which he means for religion: who takes anybody's word for
everything, from a fear of using his own faculties, and who is
overwhelmed in the presence of rank, wealth, or ability superior to his
own. We see another man careless, and contemptuous, and self-willed,
from a want of feeling of what there is in the universe, and in his
fellow-men superior to his faculties, and mysterious to his
understanding. And in the merest infants, we may discern, by careful
watching, a difference no less marked. One little creature will reach
boldly after everything it sees, and buffet its playthings and the
people about it, and make itself heard and attended to whenever it so
pleases, and has to be taught and trained to lie quiet and submissive.
And another of the same age will watch with a shrinking wonder whatever
is new or mysterious, and be shy before strangers, and has to be taught
and trained to examine things for itself, and to make free with the
people about it. Such being the varieties in the strength of the natural
faculty, the training of it must vary accordingly.
As I have said before, no human faculty needs to be repressed; because
no human faculty is in itself bad. Where any one power appears to be
excessive, we are not to set to work to vex and mortify it: but rather,
to bring up to it those antagonist faculties which ought to balance it,
and which, in such a case, clearly want strengthening. If, for instance,
a child appears to have too much of this faculty of Veneration--if it
fancies a mystery in everything that happens, and yields too easily to
its companions, and loves ghost stories which yet make it ill, and is
always awe-struck and dreaming about something or other--that child is
not to be laughed at, nor to be led to despise or make light of what it
cannot understand. That child has not too much Veneration: for no one
can ever have too much of the faculty. The mischief lies in his having
too little of something else;--too little self-respect; too little hope;
too little courage.
Let him continue to exercise and enjoy freely his faculty of Wonder.
His mother should tell him of things that are really wonderful and past
finding out: and as he grows old enough, let her point out to him that
all things in nature are wonderful, and past our finding out, from the
punctuality of the great sun and blessed moon, to the springing of the
blade of grass. Let her sympathise in his feeling that there is
something awful in the thunderstorm, and in the incessant roll of the
sea. Let her express for him, as far as may be, his unutterable sense of
the weakness and ignorance of child or man in the presence of the
mighty, ever-moving universe, and of the awful unknown Power which is
above and around us, wherever we turn. Let her show respect to every
sort of superiority, according to its kind--to old age, to scholarship,
to skill of every sort, to social rank and office; and above all, to the
superiority that goodness gives. Let her thus cherish and indulge her
child's natural faculty, and permit no one else to thwart it. But she
must give her utmost pains to exercise at the same time his inquiring
and knowing faculties, and his courage and self-respect. Among the many
wonders which she cannot explain, there are many which she can. He
should be encouraged to understand as much as anybody understands, and
especially of those things which he is most likely to be afraid of. He
should be made to feel what power is given to him by such knowledge: and
led to respect this power in himself as he would in any one else. I
knew a little child whose reverence for Nature was so strong as almost
to overpower some other faculties. She was town-bred: and whenever it
chanced that she was out in the country for more than a common walk, she
was injuriously excited, all day long. She was not only in a state of
devout adoration to the Maker of all she saw: but she felt towards the
trees, and brooks, and corn-fields as if they were alive, and she did
not dare to interfere with them. One day, some companions carried home
some wild strawberry roots for their gardens, and persuaded her to do
the same. She did so, in a great tremor. Before she had planted her
roots, she had grown fond of them, as being dependent on her; and she
put them into the ground very tenderly and affectionately. As it was now
near noon, of course she found her strawberries withered enough when she
next went to look at them, as they lay drooping in the hot sun. She
bethought herself, in her consternation, of a plan for them: ran in for
a little chair: put it over the roots, stuffing up with grass every
space which could let the sunshine in; watered the roots, and left them,
with the sense of having done a very daring thing. It was sunset before
she could go to her garden again. When she removed the chair, there were
the strawberries, fresh and strong, with leaves of the brightest green!
It was a rapturous moment to this superstitious child--this, in which
she felt that she had meddled with the natural growth of something, and
with success. And it was a profitable lesson. She took to gardening, and
to trying her power over Nature in other ways, losing some superstition
at every step into the world of knowledge, and gaining self-respect (a
highly necessary direction of the spirit of reverence) with every proof
of the power which knowledge confers.
What the parent has to do for the child in whom the sentiment of
Reverence appears disproportionate, is to give him Power in himself, in
every possible way, that he may cease to be overwhelmed with the sense
of power out of himself on every hand. If he can become possessed of
power of Conscience, his religious fear will become moderated to
wholesome awe. If he can become possessed of power of understanding, the
mysteries of Nature will stimulate instead of depressing his mind. If he
can attain to power of sympathy, he will see men as they are, and have a
fellow-feeling with them, through all the circumstances of rank and
wealth which once wore a false glory in his eyes. If he can attain a due
power of self-reliance, he will learn that his own wonderful faculties
and unbounded moral capacities should come in for some share of his
reverence, and be brought bravely into action in the universe, instead
of being left idle by the wayside, making obeisance incessantly to
everything that passes by, while they ought to be up and doing.
What should be done with the pushing, fearless child, who seems to stand
in awe of nobody, is plain enough. As I have said, he reverences
_something_: for no human being is without the faculty. His parents must
find out what it is that does excite his awe: and, however strange may
be the object, they must sympathise in the feeling. I have known a
fearless child of three reverence his brother of four and a half. We may
laugh; but it was no laughing matter, but a very interesting one, to see
the little fellow watch every movement of his brother, give him credit
for profound reasons in everything he did, and humbly imitate as much as
he could. Supposing such a child to be deficient generally in reverence,
it would be a tremendous mistake in the parents to check this one
exercise of it. They should, in such a case, carefully observe the
rights of seniority among the children; avoid laughing at the follies of
the elder, or needlessly pointing out his faults, in the presence of the
younger, while they daily strive to raise the standard of both. They
must also lead the imagination of the little one to contemplate things
which he must feel to be at once real and beyond his comprehension. They
must, at serious moments, lead his mind higher than he was aware it
would go, even till it sinks under his sense of ignorance. They must
carry his thoughts down into depths which he never dreamed of, and where
the spirit of awe will surely lay hold upon him. I do not believe there
is any child who cannot be impressed with a serious, plain account of
some of the wonders of nature; with a report, ever so meagre, of the
immensity of the heavens, whose countless stars, the least of which we
cannot understand, are for ever moving, in silent mystery, before our
eyes. I do not believe there are many children that may not be deeply
impressed by the great mystery of brute life, if their attention be duly
fixed upon it. Let the careless and confident child be familiarised, not
only with the ant and the bee for their wonderful instinct, but with all
living creatures as inhabitants of the same world as himself, and at the
same time, of a world of their own, as we have; a world of ideas, and
emotions, and pleasures, which we know nothing whatever about,--any more
than they know the world of our minds. I do not believe there is any
child who would not look up with awe to a man or woman who had done a
noble act,--saved another from fire or drowning, or told the truth to
his own loss or peril, or visited the sick in plague-time, or the guilty
in jail. I do not believe there is any child who would not look up with
awe to a man who was known to be wise beyond others; to have seen far
countries; to have read books in many languages; or to have made
discoveries among the stars, or about how earth, air, and water are
made. If it be so, who is there that may not be impressed at last by the
evident truth that all that men have yet known and done is as nothing
compared with what remains to be known and done: that the world-wide
traveller is but the half-fledged bird flitting round the nest: that the
philosopher is but as the ant which spends its little life in bringing
home half a dozen grains of wheat: and that the most benevolent man is
grieved that he can do so little for the solace of human misery, feeling
himself like the child who tries to wipe away his brother's tears, but
cannot heal his grief! Who is there that cannot be impressed by the
grave pointing out of the mystery of life, and the vastness of knowledge
which lie around and before him; and by the example of him who did none
but noble and generous deeds, and bore the fiercest sufferings, and felt
contempt for nothing under heaven! How can it but excite reverence to
show that he, even he, was himself full of reverence, and incapable of
contempt!
II. Having said thus much about nourishing and balancing the faculty of
reverence, I need only point out the directions in which it should be
trained.
The point on which a child's veneration will first naturally fix will be
Power. It must be the parents' first business to fix that veneration on
Authority, instead of mere power. Instead of the power to shut up in a
closet, or to whip, the child must reverence the authority which reveals
itself in calm control and gentle command. The parents must be the
first objects of the child's disciplined reverence. Even here, in this
first clear case, the faculty cannot work well without sympathy: and the
child must have sympathy from the parents themselves. He must see that
his parents respect each other; that they consider one another's
authority unquestionable in the household; and that they reverence
_their_ parent--if Granny be still among them.
Beyond this, there is no reason why the sympathy between parents and
children should not be simple, constant, and true, as to their objects
of reverence.
The child may revere as very wise, some person whom the parents know not
to be so: but they may join their child in revering the wisdom which
they know to be his ideal. The child may go into an enthusiasm about
some questionable hero,--the exemplar of some virtue which the parents
feel to be of a rather low order: but they will sympathise in the homage
to virtue--which is the main point. They may be secretly amused at their
child's reverence for the constable: but they feel the same in regard to
that of which the constable is the representative to the child--the Law.
They will lead him on with them in their advancing reverence for
knowledge; for that moral and intellectual knowledge united which
constitute wisdom; and will thus turn away his regards from dwelling
too much on outward distinctions, which might otherwise inspire undue
awe.
Yet nearer will their hearts draw to his in veneration for goodness; for
intrepid truthfulness, for humble fidelity, for cheerful humility, for
gentle charity. And at the ultimate point, their hearts must become one
with his; in the presence of the Unknown; for there we are all,--the
oldest and the youngest--the wisest and the weakest,--but little
children, waiting to learn, and desiring to obey.