When in 1859 Charles Darwin expounded the theory of evolution in his

book, "The Origin of Species," he recognized the great influence it

had had upon the thought of his day, for he wrote in his note-book:

"My theory will lead to a philosophy." His conception of the struggle

for life and of the natural selection of characteristics, so widely

adopted by the thinkers of his day, popularized the principles of

Lamarck as to the casual formation of new characteristics in a species

by adaptation to environment; Darwin's conception carried these

principles along with it--and almost fused them in its own content.

These principles, excluding both creation and its finalities,

implicitly denied the immortality of the soul. The effect of such a

revolution may be imagined; for many centuries the soul had been the

_object of life_, and when the fundamental faith of existence was

shaken, the life of the conscience itself was convulsed. It may be

supposed that there was an anxious search for contradictions in the

destructive theory, if on no other grounds than that of the instinct

to preserve ancient beliefs, which lies deeply rooted in the human

race.

But let us take into consideration the two revolutionary principles

which so greatly impressed and fired the consciousness of the

university students of several generations. One principle was: "There

can be no function without an organ." The other principle which

created much enthusiasm among studious youths was: "The function

creates the organ." What! There is no function without an organ, nor

can the function even _exist without_ the organ; and yet, on the other

hand, the function without the organ can exist so vigorously as to

_create_? No such glaring and tangible contradiction had ever existed

in any theory.

And it cannot be said that Darwinism and the principles of Lamarck

were hastily studied and confused in a varied series of philosophical

theories, for Darwinism had isolated itself as a victorious idea which

drives out all other ideas, as the light of day disperses the darkness

of night. And students dwelt upon it, anxious to construct a new

morality and a new conscience; therefore these two principles were not

studied coldly and languidly. Moreover, they _penetrated together_

into the consciousness and excited enthusiasm _each on its own

account_; on such a triumphant contradiction it was proposed to

destroy a world and create another.

The final conclusion of thought, then, was this: "We are mere beasts,

there is no substantial difference between the animals and ourselves;

we are apes, but our more remote ancestors were earthworms." With what

ardor did professors from their chairs analyze the psychology of men,

to prove that, try as we may, we can find nothing in ourselves which

we do not share with animals, and with what enthusiasm did their

pupils applaud them! When professors of psychiatry removed the brains

of pigeons and monkeys by vivisection, and, after curing the

creatures, exhibited them at international psychological congresses,

devoting the most sincere attention to the study of their psychical

reactions, observing the attitudes of their bodies, their activity of

perception, and similar things--all really believed that an animal

without a brain could throw light upon the psychology of man!

When we think that this was the epoch of _positivism_--that is to say,

of those who could not believe without touching, we are profoundly

impressed by this reflection: The intelligence, then, is threatened by

dangers, like the spirit. It may be obscured, it may contain a

contradiction, an "error," without perceiving it, and as a result of a

single unnoticed error it may rush into a species of delirium, a

mortal aberration. Like the spirit, then, it has its way of salvation,

and it _needs to be sustained_ lest it should perish. The support it

requires is _not that of the senses_. Like the spirit, it needs a

continual purification, which, like the fish of Tobias, heals the eyes

of their blindness. That "self-care" which the hygiene of to-day

prescribes for the body, and which makes us spend so much time even on

cleaning and polishing our nails, should be extended to the inner man,

that this may preserve its health and its integrity.

This should be the object of "the education of the intelligence." To

educate the intelligence is to save it from its peculiar perils of

disease and death; it is to "purge it of its offenses." We shall not

educate the intelligence if we weary it by making it learn things.

This is patent in these days of ours, when the victims of nervous

disorders and lunacy abound, and when, even among those who are

considered healthy, the material consequences of madness may explode,

threatening the whole of humanity with ruin.

Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire "to make

him learn things," but by the endeavor always to keep burning within

him that light which is called the intelligence. If to this end we

must consecrate ourselves as did the vestals of old, it will be a work

worthy of so great a result.

IX

IMAGINATION

=The creative imagination of science is based upon truth=.--If, a

century ago, some one had told the men who were traveling in

stage-coaches and using oil-lamps that some day New York would blaze

with light at midnight; that men would ask for succor in mid-ocean and

that their message would be understood on land, that their flight in

the air would surpass that of the eagle--our good forefathers would

have smiled incredulously. Their imaginations would never have been

able to conceive these things. To them, modern men would have seemed

almost like men of another species.

This is because the imagination of modern men is based upon the

positive researches of science, whereas the men of past ages allowed

their minds to wander in the world of unreality.

This single fact has changed the face of the world.

When man loses himself in mere speculations, his environment will

remain unchanged, but when imagination starts from contact with

reality, thought begins to construct works by means of which the

external world becomes transformed; almost as if the thought of man

had assumed a marvelous power: the power to create.

It is thus we imagine the thought of God; all creation is the divine

thought, which has the property of realizing itself. God thought: and

behold! light, the order of creation, living things, appeared.

Modern man by the method of positive science seems to have found the

secret trace of thought which puts him in the divine path, which gives

him the revelation of his true nature, as indicated in the words of

Scripture: "Let us make man in our image and likeness."

Thus human intelligence said: "Let there be light"--and there was a

magic effulgence which comes and goes at a touch. "Let man fly in the

air and rise far above all the birds of creation"--and it was so. "Let

the voices of shipwrecked mariners travel mysteriously and without

sound, and reach distant places"--and it was so. "Let things multiply,

plants in their varieties, so that all men may have the means of life

more abundantly"--and it was so.

The imagination has created when it has started from creation: that

is, when it has first taken in existing truth. Only then has it

accomplished marvelous things.

Like the tiny bird which hid under the wing of an eagle about to soar,

and when it had been thus borne up to an immense height, disengaged

itself from the eagle and began to fly still higher by its own

efforts--so too is man, who at first holds fast to Nature, attaches

himself to her by means of the most severe speculations, and with her

soars aloft in search of truth; then he disengages himself from her,

and his imagination creates over and above Nature herself. In this

manner man seems to reflect divine attributes; the marvelous and

miraculous issue from him in such grandiose form that the man of the

past, the wren without the eagle, could not even have conceived it.

Original sin is an allegory of this eternal story, of the man _who

wished to act for himself_, to substitute himself for God, to

emancipate himself from Him, and to create. Whereupon he fell into

impotence, slavery and misery.

The mind that works by itself, independently of truth, works in a

void. Its creative power is a _means_ for working upon _reality_. But

it confuses the means with the end, it is lost.

This kind of _sin_ of the intelligence, so akin to original sin, the

sin of confounding the means with the end, recurs in every form as a

"force of inertia" which pervades the psychical life. Thus man

confounds the means, which is simpler, easier and more comprehensible,

with the end in many of his functions. Thus, for example, when

nutrition is made a pretext for gluttony, and the appetite an end in

itself, the body, instead of renewing itself in health and purity, is

poisoned. Again, when in the reproduction of species the sexual

emotion becomes an end in itself rather than a means for the renewal

of life, degeneration and sterility result. Man is guilty of a like

sin against the intelligence when he employs his creative activity of

thought for its own sake, without basing it upon truth; by so doing he

creates an unreal world, full of error, and destroys the possibility

of creating in reality, like a god, producing external works.

Thus positive science represents to us the "redemption" of thought;

its purification from original sin, a return to the _natural laws_ of

psychical energy. Scientists are like those men of the Bible story

who, after Israel had come out of Egypt, were permitted to explore the

Land of Promise, and who came back with such a huge cluster of grapes

that it took two men to carry it, and the people saw it with

amazement.

So have the scientists of to-day penetrated into the Promised Land of

truth, where lies the secret which enables man to scrutinize Nature;

and they have come out therefrom, bearing marvelous fruits for all men

to see. The secret is a simple one: it consists of an exact method

based on observation, prudence, and patience. All men might be

allowed to share the secret, for indeed such virtues correspond to the

"occult," intimate needs of their spiritual life.

It may be asked: Why should only explorers enter in, while the people

remain outside, passively enjoying the fruits of their labors?

Is it because the method of positive science, which puts man in the

way of knowing the truth, of gathering up realities--and hence of

building up his own imagination thereupon--is a monopoly, the

privilege of the chosen few?

That method which denotes the redemption of the intelligence ought to

be the method by which all new humanity is molded--the formative

method of the new generation.

In the Bible story, the explorers were the messengers, and the

witnesses to the existence of the Promised Land, into which the whole

people was to enter. And so it is here: all men should come under the

influence of the scientific method; and every child should be able to

experiment at first hand, to observe, and to put himself in contact

with reality. Thus the flights of the imagination will start from a

higher plane henceforth, and the intelligence will be directed into

its natural channels of creation.

* * * * *

=Truth is also the basis of artistic imagination=.--The work of the

intelligence is not limited to the exact observation and the simple,

logical reasoning upon which great scientific discoveries may be

founded. There is a more exalted work, confronting which none can say,

as in the presence of certain scientific discoveries; "I also might

have been able to do this."

Dante, Milton, Goethe, Raphael, Wagner, are mighty mysteries, miracles

of intelligence, which cannot be classed with the simple processes of

observation and reasoning. Nevertheless, every man has his share of

artistic imagination, he has the instinct to create the beautiful with

his mind; and from this instinct duly developed come all the vast

treasures of art, scattered almost like crumbs of gold wherever there

was an intensity of civil life, wherever the intelligence had time to

mature in peace. In every province which has preserved traces of

ancient peoples we find local artistic types of work, of furniture, of

poetic songs and popular music. This multiform creation of the inner

man, then, enfolds him and protects his spirit in its intellectual

needs, just as the iridescent shell encloses the mollusc.

In addition to the work of observing material reality, there is a

creative work which lifts man up from earth and transports him into a

higher world which every soul may attain, within its individual

limits.

Yet no one can say that man _creates_ artistic products out of

nothing. What is called _creation_ is in reality a composition, a

construction raised upon a _primitive material_ of the mind, which

must be collected from the environment by means of the senses. This is

the general principle summed up in the ancient axiom: _Nihil est in

intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensa_ (There is nothing in the

intellect which was not first in the senses). We are unable to

"imagine" things which do not actually present themselves to our

senses; even language would be lacking to us to explain things lying

beyond those customary limits by which our consciousness is bounded.

The imagination of Michelangelo was unable to picture God otherwise

than as a venerable old man with a white beard. When we try to imagine

the eternal torments of hell, we talk of fire; we think of Paradise as

a place of light. Those born blind and deaf can form no definite idea

of sensations they have never been able to perceive. It is well known

that persons blind from their birth imagine colors by comparing them

to sounds: for instance, they imagine red as the sound of a trumpet,

blue as the sweet music of the violin. The deaf, when they read

descriptions of delicious music, imagine the classic beauty of a

painted picture. The temperaments of poets and artists are

pre-eminently sensorial. And all the senses do not contribute in equal

measure to give a type to the individual imagination; but certain

senses are often predominant. Musicians are auditive, and are inclined

to describe the world from the sounds it conveys to them; the warbling

of the nightingale in the silence of a wood; the patter of the rain in

the solitude of the country-side, may be as springs of inspiration for

great musical composers; and some of them, describing a tract of

country, will dwell only on its silences and noises. Others again,

whose susceptibilities are predominantly visual, are impressed by the

forms and colors of things. Or it may be the motion, the flexuosity,

the impetus of things; the tactile impressions of softness and

harshness, which make up the descriptive content of imaginative types

in whom the tactile and muscular sensations predominate.

There are persons who have had non-sensorial impressions, and they are

persons whose spiritual life was of very great intensity. They have

_internal impressions_ which cannot be accounted fruits of the

imagination, but must be accepted as realities simply perceived. That

they are realities is affirmed not only by the introspection of normal

subjects, but by the effect upon their internal personality. "The

revelations vouchsafed by God," says Saint Teresa, "are distinguished

by the great spiritual benefits with which they enrich the soul; they

are accompanied by light, discernment, and wisdom." But if such

persons wish to describe these impressions which do not penetrate by

means of the senses, they are obliged to borrow the language of

sensorial impression. "I heard a voice," says the Blessed Raymond of

Capua, "which was not in the air, and which pronounced words that

reached my spirit, but not my ear; nevertheless I understood it more

distinctly than if it had come to me from an external voice. I could

not reproduce this voice, if I can call that a voice which had no

sound. This voice formed words and presented them to my spirit." The

Life of Saint Teresa abounds in similar descriptions, in which she

tries to convey, by the inappropriate language of the senses, what she

saw, not with her eyes, but with her soul.

The difference between these internal impressions, which occur in

others as well as in saints (and certainly do not constitute

saintliness), and the hallucinations of the insane, is clearly marked.

In the madman, an excitement of the cerebral cortex reproduces old

images deposited by the sensorial memory, which project themselves

into the external world whence they were taken, with external

sensorial characteristics; so that the sufferer really believes that

he sees his phantasms with his actual eyes, and that he hears the

voices which persecute him; he is the victim of a pathological

condition; the whole personality reveals signs of his organic

decadence, the concomitants of his psychical disintegration.

Setting aside, then, direct spiritual impressions of very rare

occurrence, not to be looked upon even as aids to sanctity,

impressions which may form suitable subjects of study for specialists

such as teleologists or the members of the English Society of

Psychical Research, but which do not enter into educational

conceptions, there remains for our consideration but a single material

of construction for intellectual activities: that of the senses.

Imagination can have only a sensory basis.

The sensory education which prepares for the accurate perception of

all the differential details in the qualities of things, is therefore

the foundation of the observation of things and of phenomena which

present themselves to our senses; and with this it helps us to collect

from the external world the material for the imagination.

Imaginative creation has no mere vague sensory support; that is to

say, it is not the unbridled divagation of the fancy among images of

light, color, sounds and impressions; but it is a construction firmly

allied to reality; and the more it holds fast to the forms of the

external created world, the loftier will the value of its internal

creations be. Even in imagining an unreal and superhuman world, the

imagination must be contained within limits which recall those of

reality. Man creates, but on the model of that divine creation in

which he is materially and spiritually immersed.

In literary works of the highest order, such as the _Divina Commedia_,

we admire the continual recurrence to the mind of the supreme poet of

material and tangible things which illustrate by comparison the things

imagined:

As doves

By fond desire invited, on wide wings

And firm to their sweet nest returning home,

Cleave the air, wafted by their will along;

Thus issued from that troop where Dido ranks,

They, through the ill air speeding.

(Carey's translation of Dante's _Inferno_, Canto V.)

And as a man with difficult short breath

Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore,

Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands

At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd

Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits

That none hath passed and lived.

(Carey's translation of Dante's _Inferno_, Canto I.)

As sheep that step from forth their fold by one

Or pairs, or three at once; meanwhile the rest

Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose

To ground, and what the foremost does, that do.

The others, gathering round her if she stops,

Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern;

So saw I moving to advance the first

Who of that fortunate crew were at the head,

Of modest mien, and graceful in their gait.

(Carey's translation of Dante's _Purgatorio_, Canto III.)

As though translucent and smooth glass or wave

Clear and unmoved, and flowing not so deep

As that its bed is dark, the shape returns

So faint of our impictured lineaments

That on white forehead set, a pearl as strong

Comes to the eye; such saw I many a face

All stretch'd to speak.

(Carey's translation of Dante's _Paradiso_, Canto III.)

Dante's metaphors are profuse and marvelous, but every lofty writer

and every great orator perpetually links the fruits of the imagination

with the observation of fact; and then we say that he is a genius,

full of imagination and knowledge, and that his thought is clear and

vital.

"As a pack of hounds, after vainly pursuing a hare, returns in

mortification to the master with hanging heads and drooping tails, so

on that tumultuous night did the mercenaries return to Don Rodrigo's

stronghold" (Manzoni, _I promessi Sposi_).

Imagery is confined to actual figures; and it is this measure and this

_form_ which give power to the creations of the mind. The imaginative

writer should possess a rich store of perceptive observations, and the

more accurate and perfect these are, the more vigorous will be the

form he creates. The insane talk of fantastic things, but we do not

therefore say that they have a great deal of "imagination"; there is a

vast gulf between the delirious confusion of thought and the

metaphorical eloquence of the imagination. In the first case there is

a total incapacity to perceive actual things correctly, and also to

construct organically with the intelligence; in the second, the two

things are co-existent as forms closely bound up one with the other.

The value of imaginative speech is determined by these conditions:

that the images used should be _original_, that their author should

himself link together the actual and the created images, his own skill

making him susceptible to their just and harmonious association. If he

repeats or imitates the images of others, he achieves nothing. Hence

it is necessary that every artist should be an observer; and so,

speaking of the generality of intelligences, it may be said that in

order to develop the imagination it is necessary for every one first

of all to put himself in contact with reality.

The same thing holds good in art. The artist "imagines" his figure; he

does not copy it, he "creates" it. But this creation is in fact the

_fruit_ of the mind which is rooted in the observation of reality. The

painter and the sculptor are, _par excellence_, types of visual

susceptibility to the forms and colors of their environment, capable

of perceiving its harmonies and contrasts; and it is by refining his

powers of observation that the artist finally perfects himself and

succeeds in creating a masterpiece. The immortal art of Greece was

above all an art based on observation; the scanty clothing which was

the fashion of his day enabled the Greek artist to contemplate the

human form freely; and the exquisite sensibility of his eye enabled

him to distinguish the beautiful body from that which lacked harmony,

until under the impulse of genius, he was able to create the ideal

figure, conceived by the fusion of individual beauties chosen from

details in the sensorial storehouse of the mind. The artist, when he

creates certainly does not compose by putting together the parts which

are to form the whole as in a mosaic; in the ardor of inspiration he

sees the complete _new figure_, born of his genius; but details he has

accumulated have served to nourish it, as the blood nourishes the new

man in the bosom of his mother.

Raphael continually visited the Trastevere, a popular quarter where

the most beautiful women in Rome were to be found, in order to seek

the type of a Madonna. It was here he became acquainted with the

Fornarina and his models. But when he painted the Madonna he

reproduced "the image of his soul." We are told that Michelangelo

would spend entire evenings gazing into space; and when they asked him

at what he was gazing, he replied: "I see a dome." It was after this

form, so marvelously created within him, that the famous cupola of St.

Peter's in Rome was fashioned. But it could never have been born, even

in the mind of Michelangelo, if his architectural studies had not

prepared the material for it.

No genius has ever been able to create the absolutely new. We have

only to think of certain forms much used in art, and heavy and

grotesque as the human fancy which is incapable of rising above the

earth. It seems to me amazing that the figure of the winged angel

should still persist, and that no artist should have yet improved upon

it. To represent a being more diaphanous than man, and without

corporeal weight, we have robust beings whose backs are furnished with

colossal wings covered with heavy feathers. Strange indeed is this

fusion in a single creature of such incompatible natural features as

hair and feathers, and this attribution to a human being of six

limbs--arms, legs and wings, as to an insect. This "strange

conception" continues to be so materialized, not certainly as an

artistic idea, but as the result of poverty of language. Indeed, we

talk of angels "flying" because our language is human and earthly, and

we cannot imagine the attributes of angels. Few indeed are the artists

who in pictures of the Annunciation represent the Angel as a luminous,

delicate, and evanescent figure.

The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.

When, for instance, in a drawing-room, some one pays us a compliment,

if this is founded upon one of our real qualities, and touches it

closely, we feel legitimate satisfaction, because what has been said

is relevant, and we may conclude that the person _has observed us_ and

feels a sincere admiration for us. We accordingly think of such a

person: He is subtle and intellectual; and we feel disposed to

reciprocate his friendliness. But if the compliment praises us for

qualities we do not possess, or distorts or exaggerates our true

attributes, we think with disgust: What a coarse creature! and feel

even more coldly to him than before.

Dante's sublime sonnet must certainly have touched the heart of

Beatrice profoundly:

My lady looks so gentle and so pure

When yielding salutation by the way,

That the tongue trembles and has nought to say,

And the eyes, which fain would see, may not endure.

And still, amid the praise she hears secure,

She walks with humbleness for her array;

Seeming a creature sent from Heaven, to stay

On earth, and show a miracle made sure.

She is so pleasant in the eyes of men

That through the sight the inmost heart doth gain

A sweetness which needs proof to know it by;

And from between her lips there seems to move

A soothing essence that is full of love,

Saying for ever to the spirit: "Sigh!"

(Rossetti's translation, Dante's _Vita nuova_, section XXVI.)

A very different impression must have been made on the self-respect

and delicate sensibility of a feminine soul by this other sonnet,

which is clumsy and bombastic because it is full of inappropriate and

exaggerated metaphors:

Your salutation and your glances bright

Deal death to him who greets you on your way;

Love my assailant, heedless of my plight,

Cares nought if what he does shall heal or slay.

Straight to the mark his arrow flew apace

Piercing my heart and cleaving it in twain;

I was as one who sees Death face to face;

No word I spake--so great my burning pain.

As through the window of the lordly tower

The missile hurtles, shattering all within,

So did the arrow enter through my eye;

Bereft of life and spirit in that hour

I stood there, to a man of brass akin,

That mocks with semblance of humanity.

(Guinizelli, 1300.)

If, then, the true basis of the imagination is reality, and its

perception is related to exactness of observation, it is necessary to

prepare children to perceive the things in their environment exactly,

in order to secure for them the material required by the imagination.

Further, the exercise of the intelligence, reasoning within sharply

defined limits, and distinguishing one thing from another, prepares a

cement for imaginative constructions; because these are the more

beautiful the more closely they are united to a form, and the more

logical they are in the association of individual images. The fancy

which exaggerates and invents coarsely does not put the child on the

right road.

A true preparation digs the beds where the waters which well up from

intellectual creation will flow in smiling or majestic rivers, without

overflowing and so destroying the beauty of internal order.

In the matter of causing the springing up of these rushing waters of

internal creation we are powerless. "Never to obstruct the spontaneous

outburst of an activity, even though it springs forth like the humble

trickle of some almost invisible source," and "to wait"--this is our

task. Why should we delude ourselves with the idea that we can "create

an intelligence," we who can do nothing but "observe and await" the

blade of grass which is sprouting, the microbe which is dividing

itself?

We must consider that creative imagination must rise like an

illuminated palace, on dark foundations deeply imbedded in the rock,

if it is to be anything but a house of cards, an illusion, an error;

and the salvation of the intelligence is "to be able to plant the feet

on firm ground."

* * * * *

=Imagination in children=.--It is a very common belief that the young

child is characterized by a vivid imagination, and therefore a special

education should be adopted to cultivate this special gift of nature.

His mentality differs from ours; he escapes from our strongly marked

and restricted limits, and loves to wander in the fascinating worlds

of unreality, a tendency which is also characteristic of savage

peoples.

This childish characteristic, however, gave rise to the generalization

of a materialistic idea now discredited: "Ontogenesis sums up

philogenesis": that is, the life of the individual reproduces the life

of the species; just as the life of man reproduces the life of

civilization, so in young children we find the psychical

characteristics of savages. Hence the child, like the savage, is

attracted by the fantastic, the supernatural, and the unreal.

Instead of indulging in such flights of scientific fancy as these, it

would be much simpler to declare that an organism as yet immature,

like that of the child, has remote affinities with mentalities less

mature than our own, like those of savages. But even if we refrain

from interfering with the belief of those who interpret childish

mentality as "a savage state," we may point out that as, in any case,

this savage state is transient, and must be superseded, education

_should help the child_ to overcome it; it should not _develop the

savage state_, nor _keep_ the child therein.

All the forms of imperfect development we encounter in the child have

some resemblance to corresponding characteristics in the savage; for

instance, in language, poverty of expression, the existence only of

concrete terms, and the generalization of words, by means of which a

single word serves several purposes and indicates several objects, the

absence of inflections in verbs, causing the child to use only the

infinitive. But no one would maintain that "for this reason" we ought

to restrict the child artificially to such primitive language, to

enable him to pass through his prehistoric period easily.

And if some peoples remain permanently in a state of imagination in

which unrealities predominate, our child, on the contrary, belongs to

a people for whom the delights of the mind are to be found in the

great works of art, and the civilizing constructions of science, and

in those products of the higher imagination which represent the

environment in which the intelligence of our child is destined to form

itself. It is natural that in the hazy period of his mental

development the child should be attracted by fantastic ideas; but this

must not make us forget that he is to be our continuator, and for that

reason should be superior to us; and the least we ought to give him to

this end is the maximum at our disposal.

A form of imagination supposed to be "proper" to childhood, and almost

universally recognized as creative imagination, is that spontaneous

work of the infant mind by which children attribute desirable

characteristics to objects which do not possess them.

Who has not seen a child riding upon and whipping his father's

walking-stick, as if he were mounted upon a real horse? There we have

a proof of "imagination" in the child! What pleasure it gives to

children to construct a splendid coach with chairs and armchairs; and

while some recline inside, looking out with delight at an imaginary

landscape, or bowing to an applauding crowd, other children, perched

on the backs of chairs, beat the air as if they were whipping fiery

horses. Here is another proof of "imagination."

But if we observe rich children, who own quiet ponies, and drive out

habitually in carriages and motor-cars, we shall find that they look

with a touch of contempt at the child who is running about whipping a

stick in great excitement; they would be astonished to see the delight

of children who imagine themselves to be drawn along by stationary

armchairs. They would say of such children: "They are very poor; they

act thus because they have no horses or carriages." An adult resigns

himself to his lot; a child creates an illusion. But this is not a

proof of imagination, it is a proof of an unsatisfied desire; it is

not an activity bound up with gifts of nature; it is a manifestation

of conscious, sensitive poverty. No one, we may be sure, will say that

in order to educate a rich child we should take away his pony and give

him a stick. Nor is it necessary to prevent the poor child from being

content with his stick. If a poor man, a beggar, had nothing but dry

bread to eat, and if he placed himself by the grated window of a rich

underground kitchen because when he smelt its savory odors he imagined

himself to be eating excellent dishes together with his bread, who

could prevent him? But no one would say that in order to develop the

imaginative activity of the fortunate persons for whom the actual

dishes were destined, it would be well to take away their meat and

give them bread and fragrance.

A poor mother who was devoted to her little child offered him the

piece of bread which was all she had to give in this manner: she

divided it into two portions, and gave them to him in succession,

saying: "This is the bread, this is the meat." The child was quite

content. But no mother would deprive her child of food in order to

develop his imagination in this way.

And yet I was once seriously asked by some one if it would be

injurious to give a piano to a child who was continually practising

with his fingers upon the table, as if he were playing the piano.

"And why should it be injurious?" I asked. "Because, if I do so, he

will learn music, it is true, but his imagination will no longer be

exercised, and I do not know which would be best for him."

Some of Froebel's games are based upon similar beliefs. A wooden brick

is given to a child with the words: "This is a horse." Bricks are then

arranged in a certain order, and he is told: "This is the stable; now

let us put the horse into the stable." Then the bricks are differently

arranged: "This is a tower, this is the village church, etc." In such

exercises the objects (bricks) lend themselves to illusion less

readily than a stick used as a horse, which the child can at least

bestride and beat, moving along the while. The building of towers and

churches with horses brings the mental confusion of the child to its

culmination. Moreover, in this case it is not the child who "imagines

spontaneously" and works with his brains, for at the moment he is

required to see that which the teacher suggests. And it is impossible

to know whether the child really thinks that the stable has become a

church, or whether his attention has wandered elsewhere. He would, of

course, like to move, but he cannot, because he is obliged to

contemplate the kind of cinematograph of which the teacher speaks in

the series of images she suggests, though they exist only in the shape

of pieces of wood all of the same size.

What is it that is thus being cultivated in these immature minds? What

do we find akin to this in the adult world which will enable us to

understand for what definitive forms we prepare the mind by such a

method of education? There are, indeed, men who really take a tree for

a throne, and issue royal commands: some believe themselves to be God,

for "false perceptions," or the graver form, "illusions," are the

beginning of false reasoning, and the concomitants of delirium. The

insane produce nothing, nor can those children, condemned to the

immobility of an education which tends to _develop_ their innocent

manifestations of unsatisfied desires into mania, produce anything

either for themselves or others.

We, however, suppose that we are developing the imagination of

children by making them accept fantastic things as realities. Thus,

for instance, in Latin countries, Christmas is personified by an ugly

woman, the _Befana_, who comes through the walls and down the

chimneys, bringing toys for the good children, and leaving only lumps

of coal for the naughty ones. In Anglo-Saxon countries, on the other

hand, Christmas is an old man covered with snow who carries a huge

basket containing toys for children, and who really enters their

houses by night. But how can the _imagination_ of children be

developed by what is, on the contrary, the fruit of _our_ imagination?

It is we who imagine, not they; they _believe_, they do not imagine.

Credulity is, indeed, a characteristic of immature minds which lack

experience and knowledge of realities, and are as yet devoid of that

intelligence which distinguishes the true from the false, the

beautiful from the ugly, the possible from the impossible.

Is it, then, _credulity_ we wish to develop in our children, merely

because they show themselves to be credulous at an age when they are

naturally ignorant and immature? Of course, credulity may exist in

adults; but it exists in _contrast_ with _intelligence_, and is

neither its foundation nor its fruit. It is in periods of intellectual

darkness that credulity germinates; and we are proud to have outlived

these epochs. We speak of credulity as a mark of the uncivilized.

Here is a piquant anecdote of the seventeenth century. The Pont Neuf

in Paris was the main highway for foot-passengers, and a meeting-place

for loungers. Many mountebanks and charlatans mingled with the crowd.

There was one of these charlatans who was making a fortune; he sold an

ointment from China which enlarged the eyes, decreased the size of the

mouth, lengthened noses that were too short, and shortened those that

were too long, De Sartine, Chief of the Police, called up this

charlatan to have him imprisoned, and said to him:

"Mariolo, how do you manage to attract so many people and gain so much

money?"

"Sir," replied the other, "how many persons, do you suppose, cross the

bridge in one day?"

"From ten to twelve thousand," replied de Sartine.

"Well, sir, how many intelligent persons do you suppose there are

among them?"

"A hundred," replied the official.

"That's a liberal allowance," said the charlatan, "but let us leave it

at that. I will rely on the other nine thousand nine hundred for my

living."

The situation has so far changed between those days and our own that

there are now more intelligent and fewer credulous persons. Education,

therefore, should not be directed to credulity but to intelligence. He

who bases education on credulity builds upon sand.

I know of an incident which is perhaps reproduced in our society

thousands of times. Two girls of noble family had been educated in a

convent, where, to safeguard them from the seductions and vanities of

the life for which they were destined, the nuns had persuaded them

that the world is full of deceit, and that if, when people praise us,

we could conceal ourselves and listen to what they say when we have

disappeared, we should hear very chastening things. When they were of

an age to be presented in Society, the two youthful princesses made

their first appearance at an evening reception, to which their mother

had invited a great many guests. All lavished praises on the charming

young girls. In the drawing-room there was an alcove concealed by a

large curtain. Curious to hear what would be said of them when they

disappeared, the two agreed to slip out and hide behind the curtain.

Scarcely had the attractive objects of the general admiration vanished

when the praises which had been kept within due bounds in their

presence, were redoubled. The two girls told me that they experienced

an indescribable revulsion of feeling at the moment; they thought that

everything the nuns had made them believe was false; they renounced

religion there and then, and made up their minds to throw themselves

into the pleasures of society. "We afterwards had to reconstruct our

lives ourselves, embrace the truths of religion afresh, and understand

for ourselves the emptiness of social brilliance."

Credulity gradually disappears with experience, and as the mind

matures: _instruction_ helps towards this end. In nations as in

persons, the evolution of civilization and of souls tends to diminish

credulity; _knowledge_, as is commonly said, dispels the _darkness_ of

ignorance. In the void which is ignorance, the fancy easily wanders,

just because it lacks the support which would enable it to rise to a

higher level. Thus the Pillars of Hercules disappeared when the

Straits of Gibraltar became the gates of the oceans; and no Columbus

could now persuade the Red Indians, whom the great American spirit of

democracy receives into its civilizing schools, that the heavens are

obedient to him, darkening the sun at his command; for eclipses are

phenomena as well known to them as to the white races.

Is this illusory imagination, based upon credulity, a thing we ought

to "develop" in children? We certainly have no wish to see it persist;

in fact, where we are told that a child "no longer believes in

fairy-tales," we rejoice. We say then: "He is no longer a baby." This

is what _should_ happen and we await it: the day will come when he

will no longer believe these stories. But if this maturation takes

place, we ought to ask ourselves: "What have _we_ done to help it?

What support did we offer to this frail mind to enable it to grow

straight and strong?" The child overcomes his difficulties _in spite_

of our endeavor to keep him in ignorance and illusion. The child

overcomes himself and us. He goes where his internal force of

development and maturation lead him. He might, however, say to us:

"How much you have made us suffer! The work of raising ourselves was

hard enough already, and you oppressed us." Would not such conduct be

much as if we compressed the gums to prevent the teeth from coming,

because it is characteristic of babies to be toothless, or prevented

the little body from standing erect, because at first the

characteristic of the infant is that it does not rise to its feet?

Indeed, we do something of the same sort when we deliberately prolong

the poverty and inaccuracy of childish speech; instead of helping the

child by making him listen intently to the distinct enunciation of

speech sounds, and watch the movements of the mouth, we adopt _his_

rudimentary language, and repeat the primordial sounds he utters,

lisping and perverting the consonants in the manner habitual to those

making first efforts to articulate words. Thus we prolong a formative

period full of difficulty and exertion for the child, thrusting him

back into the fatiguing infant state.

And we are behaving in exactly the same manner to-day with regard to

the so-called education of the imagination.

We are amused by the illusions, the ignorance, and the errors of the

immature mind, just as at no very remote date we were amused to see an

infant _laugh_ when it was tossed up and down, a proceeding now

condemned by infantile hygiene as wrong and dangerous in the extreme.

In short, it is _we_ who are amused by the Christmas festivities and

the credulity of the child. If we confess the truth, we must admit

that we are somewhat like the fine lady who took a superficial

interest in a hospital for poor children, but who kept on declaring:

"If there were to be no more sick children, I should be quite

unhappy." We, too, might say: "If the credulity of children were to

cease, a great pleasure would be taken from our lives."

It is one of the careless errors of our day to arrest artificially a

stage of development for our amusement; as in the ancient courts the

bodily growth of certain victims was arrested to make them dwarfs and

the pastime of the king. Such a statement may seem severe, but it

rests on an actual fact. We are unconscious of it, it is true; yet we

speak of it continually when we say among ourselves with lofty scorn

of the age of immaturity: "Really, we are not children." If we would

refrain from prolonging the child's immaturity in order to be able to

contemplate his inferior state in immobility, and would, on the

contrary, allow free growth admiring the marvels of his progression

ever on the road of higher conquests, we should say of him, with

Christ: "He who would be perfect must become as a little child."

If what is called infant imagination is the product of "immaturity" of

the mind, combined with the poverty in which we leave the child and

the ignorance in which he finds himself, the first thing to do is to

enrich his life by an environment in which he will become the owner of

something, and to enrich his mind by knowledge and experience based on

reality. And having given him these, we must allow him to _mature_ in

_liberty_. It is from freedom of development that we may expect the

manifestations of his imagination.

To enrich the child, who is the poorest among us, because he has

nothing and is the slave of all--this is our first duty towards him.

It will be said: Must we, then, give horses, carriages, and pianos to

all children? By no means. Remedies are never direct when a complex

life is in question. The child who has nothing is the one who dreams

of things the most impossible of attainment. The destitute dream of

millions, the oppressed of a throne. But he who possesses something

attaches himself to that which he possesses to preserve and increase

it reasonably.

A person without employment will dream of becoming a prince; but a

teacher in a school dreams of becoming a head master. Thus the child

who has a "house" of his own, who possesses brooms, rubbers, pottery,

soap, dressing-tables and furniture, is happy in the care of all these

things. His desires are moderated, and the peace he derives from them

opens up a life of expansion to his internal creative activities.

* * * * *

It is "living among real possessions of his own" which calms the

child, and assuages those desires which consume his precious powers in

the vanity of illusion. Such a result is not to be achieved by

_imagining_ that he is living among possessions of his own. Some

teachers in charge of a model orphanage once said to me: "We too make

our children perform the exercises of practical life which you

describe; come and see." I went. Some of the authorities were also

present, and a university professor of pedagogy.

Some children seated at a little table with playthings were laying the

table for a doll's meal; their faces were quite without expression. I

looked in amazement at the persons who had invited me; they seemed

quite satisfied; they evidently thought that there was no difference

between laying a table in play and laying it for an actual meal; for

them imaginary life and real life were the same thing. May not this

subtle form of error be instilled in infancy and afterwards persist as

a mental attitude? It was perhaps this error which caused a famous

Italian pedagogist to say to me: "Liberty a new thing? Pray read

Comenius--you will find that it was already discussed in his times." I

replied: "Yes, many talk of it, but the liberty I mean is a form of

liberty actually realized." He seemed not to understand the

difference. I ought to have asked: "Do you not believe that there is

any difference between him who talks of millions and him who possesses

them?"

To be contented with the imaginary, and to live as if what we imagine

actually existed; to run after illusion, and "not to recognize"

reality, is a thing so common that scarcely is it apprehended, and the

cry of alarm raised: "Awake to truth, O man!" when the consciousness

becomes aware of a kind of gnawing parasite which has wormed itself

subtly into our intelligence.

The power to imagine always exists, whether or not it has a solid

basis on which to rest and materials with which to build; but when it

does not elaborate from reality and truth, instead of raising a divine

structure it forms incrustations which compress the intelligence and

prevent the light from penetrating thereto.

How much time and strength man has lost and is losing by this error!

Just as vice, which is an exercise of function without purpose, wastes

the body until it becomes diseased, so imagination unsustained by

truth consumes the intelligence until it assumes characteristics akin

to the mental characteristics of the insane.

* * * * *

=Fable and religion=.--I have frequently heard it said that the

education of the imagination on a basis of fancy prepares the soul of

the child for religious education; and that an education based on

"reality," as in this method we would adopt, is too arid, and tends to

dry up the founts of spiritual life. Such reasoning, however, will not

be accepted by religious persons. They know well that faith and fable

are "as the poles apart," since fable is in itself a thing without

faith, and faith is the very sentiment of truth, which should

accompany man even unto death. Religion is not a product of fantastic

imagination, it is the greatest of realities, the one truth to the

religious man. It is the fount and basis of his life. The man without

religion is not, certainly, a person without imagination, but rather

one who lacks internal equilibrium; compared with the religious man he

is less calm, less strong in adversity; not only this, but he is more

unsettled in his own ideas. He is weaker and more unhappy; and it is

in vain that he catches at imagination to create a world for himself

outside reality. Something within him cries aloud in the words of

David: "My soul is a-thirst for God." And if he hopes to reach the

goal of his real life by the help of imagination alone, he may feel

his feet giving way among quicksands at a supreme moment of effort.

When an apostle seeks to win a soul to religion, where man may plant

his faltering feet on a rock, he appeals to understanding, not to

imagination, for he knows that his task is not to create something,

but to call aloud to that which is slumbering in the depths of the

heart. He knows that he must shake off the torpor from a feeble life

as he would shake the snow from a living body buried in a drift, not

build up a puppet of ice which will melt under the rays of the sun.

It is true that fantastic imagination penetrates religion, but in the

guise of error. In the Middle Ages, for instance, epidemics were

ascribed with great simplicity, to a direct act of divine

chastisement; to-day they are attributed to the direct action of

microbes. Papin's steam machines suggested diabolical intervention.

But these are precisely the kind of prejudices which, like all

fantasies, swarm in the void of ignorance.

All religion is not thus constructed like a fantastic castle erected

on a basis of ignorance. Otherwise we should see savage peoples

religious and civilized peoples without religion; whereas savages have

a frail and fantastic religion, mainly constructed upon the terror

inspired by the mysterious activities of Nature, and civilized peoples

have a positive religion, which becomes stronger as it becomes purer,

while the science of truth, penetrating into Nature, serves to exalt

and illustrate its mysteries.

And, above all, to-day, when there is a movement in favor of

eliminating religion altogether from the school, can we propose to

introduce it by cultivating _fable_? It is such a simple matter to

open the door directly to religion itself and allow its radiance to

penetrate, warming and invigorating life.

But it should enter like the sun into creation, not like the Befana

from the chimney-top.

Fable could prepare to some extent for pagan religion, which split up

the divinity into innumerable minor gods, symbolizing the external

world; this, being apprehended by the senses, may lend itself to

illusion; but fable could certainly never prepare for Christianity,

which brings God into contact with the inner life of man, "one and

indivisible," and teaches the laws of a life which is "felt" by men.

If the positive sciences be extraneous to religion, it cannot be said

that it is the study of reality in itself which alienates us

therefrom. Hitherto the positive sciences have studied the "external

world" in its analytical details, and if they could have made a

"sympathetic," religion that religion might be the pagan creed.

Indeed, so far science has brought a very perceptive breath of

paganism among us. But when it shall have succeeded in _penetrating

the inner man_, and there making manifest the laws of life and the

realities of existence, a great Christian light will surely shine upon

men; and maybe children, like the angels over Bethlehem, will sing the

hymn invoking peace between science and faith.

Saint John in the desert "made straight the way of the Lord" and

purged men of the grossest errors. And thus a method which gives

internal equilibrium and disperses the grossest errors which suffocate

the spiritual energies, makes ready for the reception of truth and the

recognition of the "way of life."

* * * * *

=The education of the imagination in schools for older children=.--What

is the method adopted in the ordinary elementary schools for the

education of the imagination?

The school is, in most cases, a bare, naked place where the gray color

of the walls and the white muslin curtains over the windows preclude

any alleviation for the senses. The object of this depressing

environment is to prevent the distraction of the scholar's attention

by stimuli, and concentrate it upon the teacher who speaks. The

children, seated, listen motionless hour after hour. When they draw,

they have to reproduce another drawing exactly. When they move, it is

in obedience to an order given by another person. Their personalities

are appraised solely by the standard of passive obedience; the

education of their wills consists of the methodical renunciation of

volition.

"Our usual pedagogy," said Claparède, "oppresses children with a mass

of information which can never help them to direct their conduct; we

make them listen when they have no desire to hear; speak, write,

narrate, compose and discourse when they have nothing to say; we make

them observe when they have no curiosity, reason when they have no

desire to discover anything. We incite them to efforts which are

supposed to be voluntary without the preliminary acquiescence of their

_ego_ in the task imposed, that inner consensus which alone gives

moral value to submission to duty."

The children thus reduced to slavery use their eyes to read, their

hands to write, their ears to hear what the teacher says. Their

bodies, indeed, are stationary; but their minds are unable to dwell

upon anything. They must be continually exerting themselves to run

after the mind of the teacher, who, in his turn, is urged on by a

program drawn up at random, and which is certainly regardless of

childish tendencies. The mind has to pass from thing to thing. Images

fugitive and uncertain as dreams appear from time to time before the

eyes of the child. The teacher draws a triangle on the blackboard and

then erases it; it was a momentary vision represented as an

abstraction; those children have never held a concrete triangle in

their hands; they have to remember, by an effort, a contour around

which abstract geometrical calculations will presently gather thickly;

such a figure will never achieve anything within them; it will not be

_felt_, combined with others, it will never be an inspiration. It is

the same with everything else. The object would seem to be fatigue for

its own sake, that fatigue which has engrossed almost the sum of

effort of experimental psychology.

In this environment, where free exercise is prohibited, as also the

choice of work, and meditation, where every sentiment is oppressed,

and from which every external stimulus which might enrich the

intelligence with spontaneous acquisitions is eliminated, an attempt

is made to excite the imagination by giving "compositions" to be

written. This means that the child has to _produce_ without having the

necessary material; to give, without possessing; achieve internal

activities which he is prevented from developing. And _production_ is

to come from the _exercise of production_; "constant practise in

composition" is to develop the imagination; from the sterility of the

void the most complex products of the intelligence are to be evolved!

It is well known that "composition" represents the great difficulty of

our schools. All teachers have declared that children are "poor in

ideas," that they have "disorderly minds," that they are "absolutely

without originality." The examination in written composition has

always been the most painful of all; every one knows the expression of

the child who hears the title of an obligatory theme dictated; and who

in a few hours must hand in a written composition, a product of the

imagination; it is with anguish, with oppression of the heart, with

cold hands and eyes anxiously interrogating the clock in terror of the

fleeting hour, under the distrustful surveillance of a teacher who for

the occasion is transformed into a spy-warder like those in penal

prisons, that he undergoes his torture to the end. Woe to him if he

does not hand in his composition! He will be ruined, for this is the

principal test, the one in which he is _free_ to manifest his own

worth, to give the true individual fruit by which others will measure

his intelligence. It is in this way that our young generations often

find neurasthenia and even suicide. Scholars cannot answer as did the

greatest poet of our times, Carducci, when he was requested to write

an ode on the occasion of the death of a personage: "It is

inspiration, not an occasion, which would make me write an ode."

It is interesting to study the methods by which, in "modern schools,"

where some elements of psychical hygiene have penetrated, attempts are

made to help the pupils by diminishing their exhausting effort and

leading them on gradually to composition. Composition (we must pass

over the contradiction in terms for the moment) is "taught." The

teacher gives collective lessons in composition, just as she would

explain arithmetic: this is called "collective oral composition."

We will allow specialists in this method to speak, giving a passage

containing a preparation of teachers for such lessons:

METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED IN THE MANNER OF INDICATING THE THEME

"Let us take, by way of illustration, the following brief

narrative, which consists of three phases: 1. Ernesto did not

know his lesson; 2. The teacher scolded the child severely;

3. Ernesto wept and promised to do better. If we indicate the

narrative by the words: 'Ernesto did not know his lesson'

(first fact, cause), the pupil will go on easily to the

effect, consisting of the two other phases which, logically

and in chronological order, follow the cause. If, on the

other hand, we give as the theme the indication corresponding

to the second phase: 'The teacher scolded the child,' we

oblige the pupil to go back to the cause and to make the

third phase follow upon the second. We place the pupil in a

more difficult position if we give as the theme: 'Ernesto

wept and promised to do better,' since he will then be

obliged to go back to the second and thence to the first

phase.

"Hence the first phase in every brief narrative ought to

serve to indicate the theme.

"_Method_. The teacher should write the theme on the

blackboard, and invite the pupils to think of (not to say) a

possible consequence of the fact indicated in the theme. The

teacher must let it be understood that the pupils are to work

independently, without the help of suggestion. Let us see:

"_Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire_ (theme). Think

of a possible consequence, say what happened in consequence.

"_The wool caused a bad smell_. Very good. You repeat the

narrative:

"_Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire. The wool caused

a bad smell_. Can any one add another little thought, another

possible consequence?

"_The teacher reproved Luisa. A pupil opened the window_. The

teacher repeats the exercise using the themes A. B. C. and

causing the result arrived at with the collaboration of the

scholars to be written in their copy-books.

"A theme may be proposed and the pupils may be left free to

develop it without any further explanations.

Theme A.--_Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire_. (The

wool caused a bad smell. The teacher reproved Luisa. A

companion opened the window to allow the bad odor to escape.)

Theme B.--_Ernesto upset the ink on the floor_. (The floor

was stained. The teacher reproved the child. Ernesto promised

to be more careful.)

Theme C.--_Elisa read the story well_. (The teacher praised

her and gave her a good mark. Elisa was very much pleased.)

Theme D.--_Mario made a blot on his copy-book_. (The teacher

did not correct his exercise; she scolded him. The boy went

home crying.)

"After all this collective practise the teacher gives a free

theme such as the following: 'Maria knew her lesson well.' In

developing it, the children are expected to follow the above

examples: that is to say, they are to indicate in two

sentences the logical effects of such a cause (the teacher

gave her ten marks and praised her; then she told her to

persevere in her industry)."

* * * * *

Sometimes the teaching has a psychological purport rather than a

logical one. In such a case the "little thoughts" are not linked

together as cause and effect, but by the display of psychical

activities in three spheres: "knowing, feeling, and willing."

Examples:

Amelia made me smell some ammonia (fact perceived).--

What a horrible smell! (sentiment).--I will not smell it

again (volition).

Gigi pulled my hair (fact perceived).--It hurt me

(sentiment). I pulled my companion's hand away quickly

(volition) (_I Diritti della Scuola_, Year xiv, No. 16, p.

232).

With methods such as these it is obvious that every possibility of

inspiration and creation will be destroyed. The child has to follow

phrase by phrase what the teacher indicates; thus every spark of

aptitude for original composition is quenched. Not only does the child

remain _empty of material_ wherewith to create, as in the past, but

the very capacity for creation disappears, so that if, to-morrow,

material should be formed in his mind, he would no longer have the

impulse to utilize it, and his thought would be fettered by his school

routine.

Intellectual education carried on by the teacher on such a system

makes one think of a chauffeur who should shut up the motor of an

automobile and try to propel it by the strength of his arms. He would

in this case be a porter, and the automobile a useless machine. When,

on the other hand, the motor is open, the internal force moves the car

and the chauffeur only has to guide it that it may go safely along the

street, not run into obstacles or rush into ditches, and not injure

any one upon its course.

This _guidance_ is the only thing necessary; but the real progression

is due solely to the internal impulse, which no one can create.

It was thus that the first Italian literary Renascence came about,

when the "new sweet style" arose with Dante as the spontaneous

expression of feeling:

"Count of me but as one

Who am the scribe of Love, that when he breathes

Take up my pen and as he dictates, write."

(Carey's translation, _Purgatorio_, Canto XXIV.)

The child must create his interior life before he can express

anything; he must take spontaneously from the external world

constructive material in order to "compose"; he must exercise his

intelligence freely before he can be ready to find the logical

connection between things. We ought to offer the child that which is

necessary for his internal life, and leave him free to produce.

Perhaps it would not then be impossible to meet a child running with

sparkling eyes to write a letter, or walking and meditating as he

cultivates a nascent inspiration.

We ought to tend and nourish the internal child, and _await_ his

manifestations. If imaginative creation comes late, it will be because

the intelligence is not sufficiently mature to create until late; and

we should no more force it with a fiction than we would put a false

mustache on a child because otherwise he will not have one till he is

twenty.

THE MORAL QUESTION

When we said, to begin with, that positive science had only given the

"reform" of physical life, together with the modern rules of hygiene,

as its contribution to society, we were unjust to positive science. It

has considered not only physical life, but moral life.

It is enough to think of those studies in bacteriology which refer to

the vehicles of infectious maladies in the environment, in order to

recognize therefrom a primary token of the important place which is

assigned to the community of human interests, and this is now affirmed

with an emphasis never before displayed. Microbes multiply chiefly in

damp and dirty places; underfed people are more prone to illness than

others, and so are those who are overtired. Therefore illness and

early death must be the heritage of the poor who, underfed and

overtired, live in damp and dirty places? No. It is a question of

vehicles. Microbes spread in all directions from the sources of

infection, by means of dust, insects and all the usual objects of

life, in fact by all the means of transport. They exist in

inconceivable and fabulous numbers; and every sick person is an almost

incredible source of illness and death. One single person would

suffice to contaminate the whole of Europe.

The means of transport allow microbes to cross oceans and continents

in every sense. We need only observe the transatlantic lines, and

those of the railways of the world, in order to realize the lines of

communication between the maladies which afflict humanity in all the

places of the earth. We need only study the industrial changes of

matter in order to follow in detail the daily path of the microbes,

which put all classes of society into intimate communication. The rich

lady wears linen on her person which comes from the hands of the poor,

and is constantly in their keeping; she cannot put food into her mouth

unless it is offered to her by the poor who have handled it over and

over again.

The air which is breathed by the rich may contain in its dust the

desiccated germs which a consumptive workman has scattered on the

ground. There is no way of escape. Statistics prove this: the death

rate from infectious diseases is tremendously high in all countries,

among both rich and poor, although the poor die in a double proportion

to the rich. How can we deliver ourselves from this scourge? Only on

condition that there be no more sources of infection, that is to say,

that there be no longer unhealthful places in the world, and no

underfed people constrained to work beyond their strength. The only

way by which the individual may escape is that by which all humanity

may be saved. This is a great principle, which seems to ring like a

trumpet call: Men, help one another, or you will die.

It is a fact that science has inaugurated "works of sanitation" as its

practical contribution to the fight against mortality; towns have been

opened out, water has been laid on, houses have been built for the

poor, and labor has been protected. All the environment tends to

ameliorate the "conditions of life" of the population. No works of

charity, no expression of love or of pity, has ever been able to do so

much. Science has shown us that those works which were called

"charitable," and were looked upon merely as a moral virtue,

represented the first step, although a restricted and insufficient

one, towards the real salvation of the health of humanity. It was that

which had to be done in order to fight against death. But, in order to

reach the goal, such work should be universal, and should constitute a

"reformation" of society. Then it becomes "social progress," when

there will be no benefactors or benefited, but merely humanity which

has increased its own well-being. This principle: All men are

brothers; let them love and help one another, and let not the right

hand know what the left hand doeth, will have been translated into

practise.

In sentimental times, poverty was a stimulus to which the rich man

reacted. The poor did not really tend to educate the rich man's

feelings. If, in those times, the poor man had said, "Give me

necessities, or thou shalt die," the rich man would have been

indignant. He was very far from realizing that the poor man was his

brother, with whom he shared his rights, as well as the danger of

death.

To-day science has put things on a different footing. It has

"realized" that charity benefits both rich and poor, and has

constituted a principle of civilization that which formerly was a

"moral principle" entrusted to sentiment.

In the case of morals, too, hygiene has penetrated, and has given

individual rules of life. It is through hygiene that debauchery has

become less common, that those epicurean feasts which were celebrated

in ancient times are replaced to-day by hygienic meals, the value of

which consists in the wise proportion between the needs of the body

and the food which is prepared. Wine and alcohol are rejected by the

rich more than by the poor. We eat in order to keep ourselves in good

health, and therefore without excess and without poison. This is what

the ancient morality preached when it fought against the vice of

gluttony and proclaimed fasting and abstinence to be virtues. No one

in those times could have imagined that the day would come when

millionaires would voluntarily substitute lemonade for wine, and that

great banquets would disappear entirely, leaving only the accounts of

them as a "curiosity" of the past. Nay, more: none of these modern

ascetics are proud of their virtue, they seem to respond with

simplicity to the gospel precept:

"When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance ... but

anoint thine head, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy

Father which seeth in secret."

If one of the ancient preachers could talk to these ascetics, he would

also be much edified by their conversation. What has become of those

pleasantries which formed "life" and "delight" and "gaiety" in the

time of Marguerite of Valois? The tales of Boccaccio could not now be

discussed in English society, or in any modern aristocratic society

even of much lower social rank than that which surrounded Marguerite

of Valois. Nowadays people are afraid of uttering an incorrect word,

even of hinting at the most innocent functions of the body, or of

naming those parts of their clothing which come in contact with the

skin. They only talk about elevated things, and only those people who

instruct us are looked upon as brilliant conversationalists; those

who, in speaking of their travels, tell us about the customs of the

people, or who, speaking of politics, tell us of the current

situation. Excessive laughter, jokes, and violent gestures are not

permitted. Every one keeps his limbs quiet, even avoiding those

vivacious and inoffensive gestures which are the natural accompaniment

of conversation; the tone of voice is so modulated as to be scarcely

audible. The ancient preacher would say, "These people have carried

out St. Paul's exhortation to an exaggerated degree: 'But fornication

and all uncleanness, let it not once be named among you, as becometh

saints; neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting which are

not convenient.'"

* * * * *

And among these evolutions of manners we find that it is once more

hygiene which, making itself the guide of fashion, has by degrees

simplified clothes, done away with pomatum and rouge, abolished

crinolines, modified stays and shoes, caused long-trained dresses to

disappear from the streets, and has introduced uniformity in clothing.

If a man who lived in ancient times were to appear among us, he would

ask: "Why are the people doing penance? I see men without any

ornaments and with their hair cut short; and women who, with an

edifying renunciation of vanity, go along the street without wigs and

without patches on their faces, with their hair simply knotted up; I

see countesses dressed in inexpensive costumes, in simple, dark,

monastic dresses, almost like those of the poor. The carriages are

dark, like funeral cars, and the servants wear mourning livery.

Carnival no longer enlivens the streets. Every one goes about silently

and gravely."

Who could ever have persuaded the people of old times, who used to

preach against excessive vanity, that such a picture as this does not

represent a time of penance, but ordinary daily life?

These modern people, on their side, are far from thinking that they

are condemned to a life of suffering; on the contrary, they look back

with horror on the society of the past; they would never go back to

those days when men were enslaved by grand dresses and by rouge,

poisoning themselves with debauchery and dying of infectious diseases.

They have freed themselves from a great many useless bonds and have

realized a higher enjoyment of life. All the comfort which makes life

so delicious to-day would have been an incomprehensible secret to the

nobility of past centuries. It is the secret of life.

Possibly, at one time, monks and those who were living in the world

thought of each other in a similar way. Those who had renounced the

bondage of the world and all its vanities possessed a secret of life

which was full of hitherto unknown delights, and they looked with

horror upon the so-called pleasure of their century; while those

unconscious men who were slaves from the tops of their be-wigged heads

to their feet compressed in narrow boots, called the ways of death

"life and enjoyment."

Positive science has made yet another contribution penetrating

directly into the sphere of morality. By statistic methods of

sociology the social problems of immorality and crime have been opened

up, and external facts have been studied; and criminal anthropology

has revealed the "inferior types" who by hereditary taint are those

who have a predisposition to all the moral infection of their

surroundings. Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the

resulting theories of Lombroso concerning criminals have undoubtedly

brought light into this chaos, wherein opinion as to human goodness

and wickedness was divided. Forms of "degeneration" are chiefly rooted

in the nervous system, and all the abnormal personalities produced

thereby "deviate" from the ordinary type. They have a different

intelligence and different morality. False perceptions, false

reasoning, illusions, anomalies of the will such as impulses,

irresolutions, and crazes, the deficient moral sense on which the

abnormal intelligence builds up systematic delusions, which are

interpreted as philosophical principles, place these persons in a

category apart as extra-social beings.

The general nervous weakness and the wandering intelligence which

preclude an interest in work make of these persons individuals

incapable of production, who therefore try to live upon the

productions of others. This fundamental fact, which tends to unite a

dislike of productive labor with impulses towards rapine, causes them

to make use of all those surrounding causes which prepare the external

means for crime. These men are "bad." But if we observe more closely

we see that it is not wickedness with which we have to deal but morbid

conditions and social errors. If such be the case, these bad men, who

from no fault of their own were born in these unhappy conditions, and

who are driven to perdition by society, are really "victims." Their

whole history, when closely investigated, reveals this fact. They are

hunted and neglected from babyhood. Incapable of making themselves

beloved owing to mental deficiency, volitive disorders, to the

anomaly of the affections and also to lack of physical attraction,

they pass from maternal persecution to that of the school, and finally

to that of society, bringing on themselves every kind of punishment.

The first picture which Morel drew of these "dead ones of the race"

was an impressive one. According to his original theory, containing a

synthesis which, if not very exact, yet sums up the phenomenon with

comprehensive clearness, when a cause of degeneration acts upon a man,

he may have defective children, whose deficiency increases in the two

or three following generations, until it is extinguished in the final

sterility of exceedingly debased individuals. According to Morel,

madmen, criminals, epileptics and idiots form the sad series in this

extinction of man. The man who dies leaving strong descendants, does

not really die, but is renewed in them, youth succeeding to age. It is

only the degenerate who dies, for his kind is "extinguished," the few

miserable generations whom he produces represent a "living agony."

This "dying species," which lives among the healthy, exhibiting its

weakness, its delusions, its convulsions, irritability and egoism, is

finally driven into those tombs of the living, lunatic asylums and

prisons.

What a living picture, and what a warning to man! One "fault" may be a

mortal one to him, for, like the Biblical curse, it transmits itself

to generations, and leads to eternal perdition.

How terrible it is to think of punishment falling on the innocent head

of a child! and how evident it is that our present life is not

everything, but that it has a continuation, when we shall reap the

true rewards or the true punishments of our existence. The choice lies

to a great extent in our own hands. Shall we have a beautiful,

healthy, prolific son, or a deformed, unhealthy, barren son, incapable

of loving and understanding us? The hygiene of generation is the most

important part of moral hygiene. If the salvation of the individual

life can only be obtained by caring for the hygienic life of the whole

of humanity, it is only by rigorously following the laws of health and

the laws of life that the salvation of the species can be obtained.

Alcoholism, all poisons, overwork, constitutional maladies,

dissipation of nervous force, vice, and idleness, are all _causes_ of

degeneration. It was science which went on preaching these things for

the salvation of mankind, and by these means propagating virtue. But

above all, it inculcated the great principle of "pardon," which

hitherto had been one of the mysteries of religious morality.

A few years ago, no one, however pitiful and generous, could have

looked upon the delinquent with the same justice and pity as science

has done. It has pointed out that we are _all_ responsible for this

victim of social causes, that we must all accuse ourselves of the sins

committed by the inferior individual, and exert ourselves for his

regeneration by all the means in our power. It was only the saints who

had an intuition of this truth, when they offered their merits for all

men in common and accepted responsibility for the offenses of all.

"You will hold yourselves accountable," said St. John Chrysostom, "not

only for your own salvation, but for universal salvation; he who prays

must take upon himself the burden of the interests of the whole human

race."

It is certain that if a Tages had cleansed our whole race of its

deformities, and if an analogous morality had rendered us indifferent

to the illnesses, weaknesses, and sufferings of humanity,

regenerative science would not have been able to arise. It is only by

recognizing the effects that we can go back to the unhealthy causes,

and save humanity from danger. The _causes_ of death are as invisible

and intangible as microbes; man may drink poison when he thinks he is

drinking nectar. Woe to us if the diseased and degenerate did not

exhibit themselves to us as an advance guard, to testify to the

unconscious errors which threaten us with perdition. Science does not

exactly limit itself to tending the sick, like the _personnel_ of a

hospital, but it penetrated by that goodly door, and made its way in a

contrary direction towards a normal humanity, unconscious of its

danger. The ultimate result of science is not the care of the sick but

universal health. We owe the hygienic "comfort" which ensures our

health, and diminishes general mortality to so great an extent, to the

fact that sick people were collected together and tended.

The promise of regeneration given us by eugenics, which offers us the

universal hope of a more flourishing and happier generation than that

of the past has been made possible because we mercifully collect all

the feeble-minded, the epileptics and the unhealthy. It was to this we

had to look in order to find the roads which lead to health, and

arrive at the gates of a better world.

When Christ showed the way of salvation to men He pointed to those who

were rejected by society, in whom the obvious effects of evil could be

seen, because the causes of evil are too subtle, and are not always

directly visible: "You hear with your ears and do not understand; you

behold with your eyes and do not see."

But, on the other hand, the extreme consequences are obvious, and it

is enough that the "will" of man should agree to gather them in

charitably and without repugnance in order to obtain salvation. St.

Matthew says that at the Last Judgment those who are lost will be

separated from those who are saved, and that the King will call the

latter to his right hand, saying, "Come, ye blessed of my Father,

inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was an-hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave

me drink ... I was naked and ye clothed me.... I was in prison, and ye

came unto me." "And when," replied the just, "saw we thee, O Lord,

an-hungered or thirsty or naked? When saw we thee sick or in prison

and came unto thee?" and the King shall answer and say unto them,

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye

have done it unto me." Then shall he say also unto them on the left

hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire ... for I was

an-hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no

drink ... sick and in prison and ye visited me not." Then shall they

answer him, saying, "When saw we thee an-hungered, or a-thirst, or a

stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto

thee?" Then shall he answer them, saying, "Inasmuch as ye did it not

to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."

This is the fundamental difference between heathen and Christian

morality; between intellectual Greek philosophy and practical modern

science; between the æsthetic ideal and the ideal of "life."

* * * * *

Positive science, therefore, has made us realize a part of

Christianity. We might almost say that the monastic orders practically

represented, throughout the centuries and the different civilizations,

the only form of life which is really life--that which science has

revealed to-day.

They alone, at a period of disorderly excess, had a dietary which

begins to be generally recognized as hygienic; they ate coarse bread,

fresh fruit, milk fresh from the cow, many vegetables, little meat, at

frugal but regular repasts. Withdrawing from the polluted air of

crowded cities, they chose large, spacious houses in the open country

or, at any rate, rather isolated--if possible, standing on a height.

Their luxury was not heavy, padded furniture but large grounds where

it was possible to live in the open air. Loose clothing, comfortable

sandals, or bare feet, woolen gowns, physical exercise, agricultural

work, traveling, made them almost the precursors of the modern life of

sport. Every convent spread benefactions all around--received the

poor, tended the sick, as if to show that this freer and more

privileged life was but a phase, which must necessarily be accompanied

by help to humanity. They represented the social and intellectual

_élite_; it was the Benedictines who preserved manuscripts and

treasured the arts; it was the followers of Saint Bernard who

practised agriculture, and it was the sons of Saint Francis who

preached peace.

Or it might be said that modern society, guided by positive study of

the laws of life and of the means of saving it, has encountered the

religious laws which reveal the paths of life; and realizes a form of

civilization which recalls and, in some ways, reproduces the ancient

oases of the spirit.

If, however, we were to risk a parallel between modern society and a

convent, what kind of convent would the former be?

Here is a monastery where the brethren eat according to rule, wear

hygienic clothing, are correct in their language, never indulge in

noisy quarrels, have all their interests in life in common, and

dispense their charities coldly, as if they were a custom or an

obligation of their order; they meditate on eternal life, on

salvation, and rewards and punishments in a future life, but without

being touched by these thoughts. The real truth is that they have lost

their faith, and that they do not love one another; ambition, anger,

envy and even hatred, drive away internal peace; and corruption begins

to filter in under these other sins; a sign of a deeper decadence now

begins to show itself, for chastity has been lost. That which is, _par

excellence_, the standard of Christianity, the sign of respect for

life, the consecration of the purity which leads to eternal life, has

been overthrown together with faith. The love of man is not compatible

with the excesses of the beast. It is through purity that an ardent

love to all mankind, and comprehension of others, and intuition of

truth, arise like a perfume. It is that ardent fire called charity or

love, which keeps life kindled, and gives value to all things. "Though

I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to

be burned," says St Paul, "and have not charity, it profiteth me

nothing. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all

mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not

charity, I am became as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Cor.

xiii.).

In "degenerate" convents the greatest and most elevated acquirements,

and the highest level of perfection reached, are lost; just as a

person punished by degradation first loses the last and highest

acquisitions, and only keeps the lower.

In social convents, on the other hand, the ultimate attainment has not

yet been reached; that is the difference and the contrast. The social

elevation towards Christianity is only on its first steps. Love is

lacking, and thence chastity; and all this is absent owing to the arid

void left by the absence of faith, and the oppression of spiritual

life. Positive science has not yet touched the inner man, and the

social environment does not therefore realize, in its "force of

universal civilization," the loftier human acquisitions.

When we occupy ourselves with the "moral education" of our children,

we ought to ask ourselves if we really love them and if we are sincere

in our wishes for their "morality."

Let us be practical. Fathers and mothers, what can you hope for from

your children? The European war is far less dangerous to their bodies

than the spiritual risks which they run. We must imagine a much

greater war, a universal one, to which all young men are called, and

where the survivors are pointed out as absolutely exceptional.

Therefore you are educating your sons for death. What, then, is the

use of troubling so much about them? Is it not useless to take care of

their soft hair, and their rosy nails, and the fresh and bewitching

beauty of their vigorous little bodies, if they are to die before

long?

Ah! all those who love children must fight in this deadly war, and

struggle for peace:

The creed which Mme. de Héricourt sets forth in her book, "_La Femme

Affranchie_," about the time of the French Revolution, is very

eloquent.

"Mothers, you admonish your children, saying, 'Do not tell

lies, because this is unworthy of a person who respects

himself. Do not steal: would you like it if people stole

your things? It is a dishonest thing to do. Do not oppress

those of your companions who are weaker than yourself, and do

not be rude to them, for that would be a cowardly act.' These

are excellent principles. But when the child has become a

young man his mother says, 'He must sow his wild oats.' And

sowing his wild oats means that he must perforce be a

seducer, an adulterer, and a frequenter of brothels. What? Is

this mother, who told her boy not to tell lies, the same

person who permits him now that he is a man, to betray a

woman like herself? And, although she taught her child not to

steal another child's toy, she thinks it lawful for her son

to rob a woman like herself of her life and her honor. And

she who advised him never to oppress the weak, now permits

him to range himself among the oppressors of a human being

whom society has made into a slave."

* * * * *

These mothers acquiesce in the degrading fact which perverts all

humanity. There is a strong social movement to-day against the white

slave traffic; and at the same time the science of eugenics has arisen

which tends to protect the health of posterity.

These are excellent things. But the question which lies at the root of

all these questions is a spiritual question. It is not the white

slaves who are the "lost" human beings; they are the victims of a

universal act of perdition and slavery. If such a grave spiritual

danger is hanging over us, what external hygiene can save us, unless

it is preceded by a direct struggle against this danger? The really

"lost" are those who persist in a state of death, without perceiving

it.

If any one perceives the danger, he may by this mere fact find himself

in the way of salvation. The so-called white slaves, held in scorn by

society and oppressed by punishment, cry vengeance in the sight of the

universe, and cover mankind with shame; but they are not the really

lost--they are not the only slaves. He who is lost is the innocent,

well-educated young man who, without remorse, unconscious of his own

degradation, takes advantage of a human being who is made a slave for

him, and, moreover, covers her with contempt, without hearing the

voice of conscience which admonishes him: "Why beholdest thou the mote

which is in thy brother's eye? Cast out the beam which is in thine own

eye." This man, who seeks, perhaps, to protect his own body from

disastrous consequences, although very often it is not possible to

escape them, and therefore risks, for nothing, suicide of his own

person and of his species; and who only cares to seek a social

position for himself and an honored family--this is the man who is

really lost in darkness, and reduced to slavery.

And his mother is also a slave, for she cannot follow her son, whom

she brought up with so much care for his body, and who cared for his

moral good with all the passionate love of her heart; she is a slave,

when her son is forced away from her, to go perhaps to death or to the

ruin of his physical health, and to descend into moral degradation,

while she can do nothing but watch him, silent and immovable. She

excuses herself sadly, saying that her dignity and purity forbid her

to follow her son in these paths. It is as if she were to say, "There

is my son, wounded and bleeding; but I cannot follow him, because the

road is muddy, and I might dirty my boots." Where is the heart of a

true mother? How can maternal sentiment fall so low? "She only is

dignified and pure," cries Madame de Héricourt, "who is capable of

bringing up her son in such a way that he will never have anything

shameful to confess to his mother."

The mother who has lost all her authority is herself lost.

Maternal dignity, on the other hand, is great and powerful. Behold in

ancient times the Roman matron, Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus!

Having heard that her son, a traitor to his country, was coming to

attack Rome at the head of an alien army, she went bravely out from

the protecting walls of the city, advanced towards the powerful leader

through the hostile host, and asked him, "Art thou my son, or art thou

a traitor?" At those words Coriolanus renounced his unworthy

undertaking.

In the same way, in these days, the true mother should pass beyond the

walls of prejudice and the frontiers of slavery, and have sufficient

dignity to be able to confront her son, saying to him: "Thou wilt not

be a traitor to humanity!"

What pressure can have been brought to bear on a woman to have made

her lose the sacred right of saving her son? and what can have so

weakened affection as to lead a youth to despise the maternal

authority in order to make himself a young man?

It is this death of the soul and not external facts which pronounce

our sentence.

* * * * *

If positive science, which has limited itself to the study of the

external causes of maladies, or the causes of degeneration, and has

confined itself to the inculcation of physical hygiene--that is to

say, the protection of material life--has contributed so largely to

morality, how much more may we hope for moral elevation from a

positive science which concentrates upon the protection of the "inner

life" of man?

And if the first part, scrupulously following the truth by exact

research, has arrived at the social realization of Christian

principles, we may presume that its continuation, conducted with the

same loyalty and exactitude of research, will in like manner succeed

in filling up the voids which still exist in modern civilization.

This is, I believe, the clearest and most direct reply to those who

ask what can be hoped for in the morality and religion of the new

generations, from our "pover-ositive" method of education.

If experimental medicine, by going back to the causes of diseases, has

succeeded in solving the problems which concern health, an

experimental science which concentrates upon the study of normal man's

psychical activities should lead to the discovery of the superior laws

of life and of the health of mankind.

This science has not yet been established, and awaits its

investigators; but we may foresee that if universal hygiene, which

gives humanity a guide to physical life, has come from medical

research, then this new science should produce a hygiene which will

give to all men practical guidance in moral life.

And if positive medicine arose in the hospitals, where sick people

were collected by private and public generosity, with charitable

intentions and under the guidance of empiricism, this science should,

above all, concentrate and find its experiences in schools: that is to

say, in the places where all children are gathered together for their

social elevation, and with the empirical guidance of education.

What was the elevated note of scientific medicine which gradually

superseded the empirical method? While empirical medicine believed in

blood-letting and blistering, scientific medicine elevated and

illustrated the ancient principle which had been forgotten, and which

contained all the new wisdom in a synthesis: the medicinal force of

nature, _vis medicatrix naturae_. A natural power of fighting and

conquering illness exists in the living organism, and it is to this

that we must look in order to construct rational medicine; he who

believes that the doctor and the medicine cure the sick is an

empiricist; but he who knows that it is "only the organism" that can

produce the cure, and that therefore we must protect and assist the

force which nature gives for our salvation, is a scientist.

Now the sum of treatments necessary to protect the natural forces of

defense and reorganization in positive medicine, are much more minute

and are diffused in much vaster fields than the old empiricism.

The great number of specialists who replace the single type of doctor

of the last century, is sufficient to emphasize the enormous

difference in practise which the new tendency involves.

It is interesting also to give a glance at the progress which has been

made in medicine; it has begun to cure diseases; and thence it has

gone on to discover the laws of normal physical life, and to show the

healthy how to preserve their health. When it reached this point it

found that the same measures which are necessary for preserving health

are the best for curing disease; because it is the same source of life

which gives health and the _vis medicatrix naturae_. Thus, for example,

the rational diet of to-day is not only a hygienic measure which all

should adopt in order to keep themselves in health, but the most

important factor in the cure of illness. Dietetics, whether for the

victims of gout, pellagra, fever, tuberculosis, or diabetes, is of

primary importance; lithia salts, caffeine, and creosote are useless

in comparison. The modern tendency is to reject these poisonous

remedies altogether, and to substitute the natural remedies of rest,

medical gymnastics, hydropathic treatment, and, above all, climatic

treatment. Psychiatry and neuropathology have introduced the treatment

of work: that is, a course of orderly intelligent activity, to give

occupation to individuals who begin to show signs of mental failure.

By degrees, as progress is made in this direction, the conception of

"natural healing" will triumph--the ever clearer conception, that is

to say, of the forces which sustain life.

It is only Nature which can do everything, and if the doctor is to

become useful he must follow in her footsteps and serve her with

increasing fidelity.

It is natural that investigation should lead to attempts at

interpreting these forces upon which health depends, and these studies

of "immunity" have been the most brilliant, widely diffused and

scientific of all medical studies.

When Metchnikoff believed he had discovered that the leucocytes in the

blood absorb and digest microbes and thus save man from infection, it

seemed as if a ray of clear and simple light had illuminated all the

mystery. But no sooner was his theory promulgated than it was

demolished by the successive studies in which it was subjected to a

destructive criticism, because the leucocytes are not always able to

absorb living microbes; certain "conditions" of the organism are

requisite in order that they may have this power, and so the knotty

point was merely shifted. Moreover, it is not the actual microbes

which cause disease, but their toxines. Thus the theories of toxines

seemed to be the true guide for researches; but then we entered into a

sea of complications, and it is obvious that only "aspects" and

"attributes" of immunity are accessible to us, but that the substance,

the last word, underlying all those aspects which research has

revealed is: mystery.

For this reason, there is silence to-day as to questions of immunity;

that which was once familiar as a popular idea remains among the

obscure studies which not even the students of the university should

approach.

Nevertheless, it is "impossible" that the medical science founded upon

natural forces should develop, unless the imperative necessity be

recognized of studying the mystery of life which conceals its source,

but continually expands its forces.

The invisible but real source of health and healing is always there,

at the climax of all efforts; and the palpitating energy which springs

inexhaustibly therefrom is the only reality which makes evident this

revival of the living. This medical science and this mystery cannot

but form a unity.

It is probable that this will be brought about by that science which

studies the health and the maladies of the soul. If this should

discover that the soul, too, is corruptible, subject to disease and

death, that it has its laws of health and its _vis medicatrix naturae_,

treatments tending to respect and aid this precious force of life

should multiply immeasurably; and at the same time the mysterious

source whence it gushes should impose itself on modern medicine, as

the question of immunity has done. Then life, morality and religion

will be indissolubly united.

* * * * *

Let us now turn to children of two and a half and three years old, who

touch everything, but especially those objects which they evidently

prefer, the most simple objects, as, for example, a square block of

paper, a square inkstand, or a round, shiny bell. All things which

"are not meant for them."