Then the mother comes and takes them away; half caressing, and at the

same time tapping the little hands, she calls out, "Don't touch!

naughty!" I once was present at one of these many family scenes, which

pass unnoticed. The father, who was a doctor, was sitting at the

writing-table; the mother was holding in her arms a very small child,

who was stretching out its little hands to the various objects upon

the table. The doctor said, "That child is incorrigibly naughty,

although it is so young. However much its mother and I try to cure it

of this fault of touching my things, we never succeed." "Naughty!

naughty!" repeated the mother, holding its little hands tightly, while

the child threw itself back, howling, and throwing its feet about as

if it wished to kick.

When children are three or four years older, the struggle becomes more

severe: they want to _do_ things. Those who observe them carefully

discover that they have some "tendency." They wish to imitate what

their mother does, if their mother is a housewife. They willingly

follow her into the kitchen, they wish to share her work, to touch her

things, and they try furtively to knead and cook and wash clothes, and

sweep the floor. The mother feels wearied by them; she keeps on

repeating, "Be quiet; leave it alone. Don't tease me. Go away." Then

the child makes a great noise, throws himself on the ground, and

kicks; but then he begins again to do as much as he can without being

seen, as quickly as possible; and by trying to wash things in a hurry,

gives himself a bath; trying to conceal some contraband ragout, he

makes the floor dirty. The mother's anger, cries, and reproofs

increase; and the child reacts with naughtiness and tears; but begins

again almost at once.

Where the mother does not do her own work, the child, if intelligent,

is still more unfortunate. He looks for something which he cannot

find, and cries for no reason, he flies into a passion for which no

one can account; some fathers lament this, almost with despair. "My

child is very intelligent, but so naughty! nothing will satisfy him.

It is no use to buy toys for him, he is really overdone with them;

nothing is of any use."

The mother asks anxiously, "What do you advise me to do when the child

is naughty? and when he gets into passions? He is so naughty, he never

keeps still; I cannot contend with him any more."

It is rare to hear a mother say, "My baby is good--it is always

asleep." Who has not heard some poor mother shout in a threatening

voice to the crying babe in her arms, "Be quiet, be quiet, I tell

you!" and then, naturally the child is frightened, and redoubles its

cries.

This is the first contest of the man who enters the world: he has to

struggle with his parents, with those who have given him life. And

this occurs because his infant life is "different" from that of his

parents; the child has to form himself, whereas his parents are

already formed. The child must move about a great deal, to coordinate

his movements, which are not yet under control; the parents, on the

other hand, have their voluntary mobility organized, and can control

their movements; perhaps also they are often tired after their work.

The child's senses are not yet fully developed; his powers of

accommodation are insufficient, and need help from touching and

feeling, in order to take account of objects as well as of spaces;

and his eyes are rectified by the experience of his hands. The

parents, on the contrary, have developed senses, and have already

corrected the primitive illusions of these; their powers of

accommodation are perfect, if they have not spoilt them by abuse; in

every way cerebral activity leads the senses to receive an exact

impression; they have no need to touch. Children are anxious to get

knowledge of the external world; their parents know it too well

already.

Therefore they do not understand each other.

Parents want their children to do as they do, and any diversity is

called "naughtiness." Think of the mother who drags her child along

with her; he has to run while she walks; his legs are short, while

hers are long; weak, while hers are strong, he has to bear the weight

of his body and his disproportionately large head, while the mother

has a head and body which are proportionally lighter and smaller. The

child is tired and stands and cries, and the mother exclaims, "Come

on, you naughty little thing! I won't have any nonsense. Do you want

me to carry you, lazybones? No, I won't give in to you."

Or again, we see mothers who, when their children sit down on the

ground--or lay themselves flat on their stomachs with their feet in

the air, and support themselves on their elbows, while they look round

them, call out, "Off the ground! You are making yourself dirty,

naughty child."

All this may be translated in this way: "The child is different from

the adult. The formation of his body is such that his head and his

body are enormously large in comparison with his small, slender legs,

because they are the part which will grow most. Hence the child cannot

endure walking, and prefers to lie at full length, which is the most

healthy position for him. He has a wonderful tendency towards

development; he gets his first ideas of external life and assists his

senses of sight and hearing by touching, in order to realize the forms

of objects and distance. He moves continually, because he must

coordinate and adapt his mobility. Hence he moves a great deal, walks

very little, throws himself on the ground, and touches everything, and

these are signs that he is alive, and that he is growing." No--all

this is looked upon as naughtiness.

This is evidently not a moral question. We do not seek for means to

correct these depraved tendencies of the man who is but just born. No,

it is not a moral question. It is, however, a question of life.

The child seeks to live and we want to hinder him. In that sense it

does become a moral question, as regards ourselves, since we have

begun to examine those errors on our part which do harm, and infringe

the rights of others. Moreover, our own egotism is concealed beneath

our errors of treatment; what we really resent in the child is that he

gives us trouble; we struggle against him in order to protect our own

comfort, our own liberty. How often at the bottom of our hearts we

have felt that we have been unjust, but have stifled this impression.

The little rebel does not accuse us or bear us malice. On the

contrary; just as he persists in his "naughtinesses" which are forms

of life, so does he persist in loving us, in forgiving us everything,

in forgetting our offenses, in longing to be with us, to embrace us,

to sit upon our knees, to fall asleep on our bosom. This, too, is a

form of life. And we, if we are tired or satiated, repulse him,

masking this excess of selfishness under a hypocritical pretense of

concern for the child himself: "Don't be so silly!" Insult and

calumny are always on our lips in the eternal refrain: "Naughty,

naughty." And yet the figure of the child might stand for that of

perfect goodness, which "thinketh no evil, delighteth not in iniquity,

beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things." As to

us--no, we cannot always say as much of ourselves.

If the struggle between the adult and the child could be brought to an

end in "peace," and the adult, accepting the conditions of infant

life, would seek to help the child, the former would be able to

advance towards one of the most sublime enjoyments which Nature can

bestow: that of following the natural development of the child, and

seeing the man evolved. If the opening rosebud has become a

commonplace of poetry, how much greater is the poetry of the infant

soul in its manifestations? Now this ineffable gift which was placed

beside us, in order that the miracle might accompany us and comfort

us, we trample under foot in our wrath, blaspheming as if demented.

* * * * *

When the child desires to touch and to act, in spite of "punishments

of every kind," he persists in exercises necessary "to his

development," and displays a strength of will in the matter against

which we are often powerless; he shows the same persistence as in

breathing, in crying when he is hungry, and in raising himself when he

wants to walk. Thus the child turns to external objects which respond

to his needs: if he finds them, he displays his powers in muscular or

sensory exercises, and then he is joyous; and if he does not find

them, he is restless as when his desires are unsatisfied. Toys are too

light to satisfy arms which require to make the efforts necessary in

lifting and moving objects; they are too complex to satisfy senses

which need to analyze a single sensation. They are vanity, and in

themselves they represent simulacra and parodies of actual life. And

yet they form the world of our children, in which they are constrained

to "consume" their potential powers in a continuous exasperation,

which incites them to destroy things.

Happily, children do not hear the pronouncement of the common formula,

that children have an "instinct" for destruction. Nor are they

familiar with the other axiom which contradicts this: That the

instinct of "property," in other words, selfishness, is strongly

developed in them. On the contrary, the child has merely the

overpowering instinct to "grow," and therefore to raise and to perfect

himself; in every period of life he seeks instinctively to prepare

himself for the next period. This fact is very much more

comprehensible than the strange instincts we calumniously attribute to

him.

Just try the experiment of allowing children to act for themselves;

they are at once "transformed." In the Guerrieri Gonzaga Children's

House, it sufficed to provide a comb, to transform the naughtiest,

most rebellious of the children, the one whom the teacher designated

as in need of "taming," into a lively and attractive little girl, who

combed the hair of her companions most carefully, with evident

delight. We had only to say to an awkward, lethargic child, who came

forward holding out her arms to have her sleeves pulled down for her:

"Do it yourself," and there was a flash of intelligence in her eyes,

her weary face was lighted up by an expression of satisfied pride and

amazement, and she began to pull down her sleeves with positive

delight. When these children were given a little basin and a piece of

soap, how carefully they emptied and replaced the receptacle, fearing

to break it, and how caressingly they handled the soap, laying it

down very gently! It seemed as if the task had been confided to a

mechanism of moving figures, with an accompaniment of music: the

figures were the children, the music was their own joy.

These children, occupied in dressing, cleaning, washing, combing,

cleansing, and arranging their environment, work _themselves_. As a

result, they love useful objects so much that they will preserve a

piece of paper for years, and instead of knocking against furniture,

and breaking objects, they perfect their movements.

But we place ourselves beside these lives which are hastening

triumphantly to their salvation, and seek to bind them to ourselves,

in spite of the struggle which has begun and the fear we have already

provoked. We approach them gently and seductively; and because when a

child breaks things he is obviously grieved, and therefore would

endeavor to correct and perfect his movements, we spare him this

grief, which would be in the nature of "an act of repentance on the

part of the muscles which have transgressed," and give him unbreakable

objects: plates, basins, and drinking vessels made of metal, toys made

of stuff, woolly bears, india-rubber dolls. Henceforth his "errors"

will be concealed. Every error of the muscles will pass unnoticed by

the child: he will no longer feel the pain of evil-doing, repentance,

an effort to perfect himself. He will be able to sink into error;

behold him, clumsy, heavy, without expression in his face, a stuffed

bear in his arms! He is now bound fast to vanity and error, and has

lost all consciousness thereof.

The adult hems him in ever more closely: he does everything for the

child, dresses him, even feeds him. But the child's desire is not to

be dressed and materially nourished: his deep desire is to "do," to

exercise his own powers intelligently, and thus to rise to his higher

level. With what subtle insinuations does the adult seek to confound

him! You are exerting yourself and why? That you may be washed? That

you may put on your pinafore? You can have all this done for you

without any effort. You will find it all done with greater perfection

and ease. Without moving a finger you shall have a hundred times more

done for you than you could accomplish for yourself, even with all the

exertion of which you are capable. You need not even put the bread

into your mouth, you shall be spared even this trouble, and you will

take in nourishment all the more copiously.

The devil was less cruel when he tempted Christ in the wilderness,

showing Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. "All

these things will I give Thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

But the child has not the power to answer like Christ: "Get thee

hence, Satan; for it is written: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,

and Him only shalt thou serve." The child ought to obey God, who has

prescribed that his nature shall demand action; and that he should

conquer his world as he has conquered life, to the end that he may

elevate himself and not to the end that he may acquire external

splendor and comfort. When tempted, however, he cannot resist. He ends

by possessing the objects, the pretty, ready-made things; his soul

makes no progress; he loses sight of the goal. Behold the child

clumsy, unsteady, inept, enslaved! Those incapable muscles encase a

captive soul. He is oppressed far more by this fatal inertia than by

the physical contests which initiated his relations with the adult.

Often he has fits of rage like the sinner; he bites the bear that he

cannot break, cries desperately when he is washed and has his hair

combed, rebels and struggles when he is dressed. The only movements

allowed by the devil are those of anger. But gradually he sinks into

the depression of impotence. Adults say: "Children are ungrateful;

they have none of the higher feelings as yet; they care only for their

own pleasure."

Who has not seen patient mothers and nurses, "bearing" from morning

till night the humors of four or five discontented children, who are

screaming and playing pranks with their metal plates and rag dolls?

They seem to say: "Children are like this," and a benevolent

compassion takes the place of the natural reaction of impatience. Of

such persons we say: "How good they are! how patient they are!"

But the devil, too, is patient after this fashion: he too can

contemplate the agonies and impotent rebellions of the souls which are

in his power, which are prostrate among vanities, oppressed by a great

quantity of means, the ends of which they have lost, souls in which

the consciousness of sin is extinguished, and which are gradually

sinking into an abyss of mortal error. He is patient in contemplating

them, in supporting their cries--and he too offers them bears and

rubber dolls, and feeds them, stuffing them, that is to say, with new

vanities which mask their errors, and nourish their bodies.

He who, seized with doubt, should ask concerning these mothers and

nurses: "Are they really good?" might get an idea from the reply of

Christ: "None is good save God," that is, the Creator. Goodness is the

attribute of God. He who creates is good, only creation is good. Hence

he only is good who helps creation to achieve its ends.

* * * * *

Now we come to the school. Conceptions of goodness and naughtiness

must be very definite here, for when a teacher has to leave the

class-room, she calls one of the children, who, during her absence, is

charged to write the names of the "Good" and the "Naughty" in two

columns on the blackboard under these headings. The child, however,

who is called out is quite capable of judging, for nothing is easier

than to distinguish between goodness and naughtiness in schools. The

good are those who are quiet and motionless; the naughty are those who

talk and move. The results of the classification are not very serious.

The teacher gives good or bad "conduct marks." The consequences are

not disastrous; they are, so to speak, akin to the social judgments

passed upon men whose conduct is appraised as good or bad. This does

not affect society, and the judgment entails neither honors nor

imprisonment. It is merely a pronouncement. But "esteem" and even

"honor" depend upon it, things which have a high moral value. In

school "good conduct" means inertia, and "bad conduct" means activity.

The "esteem" of the head mistress, of the teacher and of

schoolfellows, the whole "moral" part, in fact, of the system of

rewards and punishments, depend upon these appreciations. As in

society, they require no "judicial qualifications," no "authority" in

those who form them; they are based on something that "all" can see

and judge; they are the true moral judgment of the environment;

indeed, any one of the children themselves, or even the class-room

attendant, may write the list on the blackboard. There is, in fact,

nothing mysterious or philosophical in conduct; it is the sum of acts

committed, the facts of life itself, accessible to all, which

determine it. And all can see it and pronounce upon it.

On the other hand, there are much more serious acts, the consequences

of which affect the community and touch those principles of justice on

which all are entitled to rely; they therefore require "authoritative

judgments" against which there is no appeal; a kind of Supreme Court

hastily convoked.

When in an examination the children, seated side by side, have there

and then to give samples of what they have learnt, that is, to hand in

that veritable legal document, an evidence visible and accessible to

all judgments, the written task, be it dictation, composition or

problem; if then one child helps another, he is not merely naughty,

but wicked, for he has not only displayed activity, but activity for

the benefit of another. The punishment may be very serious: the

annulment of the examination, which may sometimes mean the loss of a

whole year's schooling, the repetition of that year's course. A child

who can help another is kind; well, he may be punished by having to

pass the examination again, several months later, or even by having to

go back for a whole year of his life and begin over again. There are

many cases of this kind: the family of this kind-hearted child may

have been very poor, and the child may have been making a great effort

to come out well, and so to be able soon to help his family by his own

childish work; who knows how his comprehension of this family

condition may touch the heart of a child? He may have seen in his

bewildered schoolfellow another poor boy in like circumstances. How

often some quarrel in his home, or insufficient food, may have caused

him to lie in bed, sleepless and excited, for hours? In the morning

his mind was confused. Perhaps his unfortunate schoolfellow had been

in like case just on the eve of the examinations.

It is essential to understand certain situations: the mother at home

counts the days of each school year that passes, because to her these

are so many days sacrificed; she is certainly following her boy at the

examination with a heart full of anxiety; her face at the window when

the child comes in sight asks, when he is yet afar: "How did it go?"

This picture was perhaps present in the heart of the good-natured

child when he helped his comrade.

He might, of course, keep all this to himself, perfect his own work,

or hand it in first. For justice decrees that the time spent on the

work should be counted by the minute, almost as by the chronometers of

psychological experiment. Justice is rigorous. On the paper handed in

by the child the teacher writes the hour: handed in at 10.32, handed

in at 11.5. If two papers are about equal in merit, so that it can

hardly be said from the contents which is the better of the two,

though both are superior to all the rest, a difficult case arises: it

must be decided which is to be the first. It is a matter of great

weight, because the prize is in question. When there is a doubt, the

hour decides. One paper was handed in at 10.30, the other at 10.35.

The one handed in at 10.30 is pronounced the first, because the writer

was able to do work of equal merit in five minutes less than his

rival. On what may not a prize sometimes depend! Hence a diligent

child must be very careful in his preparations for an examination; the

two in question were equally clever and equally quick; but one had

taken care to have good pens and flowing ink, and the other had not.

Thus his negligence cost him the prize. It is true that the parents

and not the children provide the pens. In strict justice all should

have the same pens, but here we enter into a sea of scruples which

might obscure justice. No, justice must be rigorous, but without

scruples. Now the clever child who helped his companion lost time,

and so by this alone he lost part of his merit; he therefore

"sacrificed" himself for a comrade.

No considerations, no extenuating circumstances will be allowed to

mitigate the punishment. Family conditions, the mother ... nothing can

avail against the canceling of an examination. Even in the case of

great criminals extenuating circumstances are admitted in mitigation

of punishment. But school is another matter; here we have to deal with

definite facts: there has been an infiltration of one mind into

another, and we are no longer able to judge the children individually

by their work. Moreover, the examination is the individual test. If

the canceling occurs at the final examination, the culprit must go

through the year again, and when a year is repeated it is the entire

year. It is not as with convicts, where months and weeks are taken

into account. Here the unit of measurement is the school year. And

then there is another point to consider in the case of convicts: their

crimes may have been induced by irresistible forces and conditions,

driving them to do evil.... But who is there who cannot refrain from

doing good? To do good is certainly not an irresistible impulse!

However, to obviate such inconvenient impulses, school educates

children to refrain from mutual aid throughout the year. It goes even

farther: it directly prevents the children from communicating one with

another. What a chase it is! The clever, practical teacher adopts

regular strategic tactics, and is familiar with all the child's

devices in this covert and deceitful contest. Children are "capable of

anything" to support one another and communicate one with another. If

"prompting" when one child is repeating a lesson might reach the

teacher's ear, we find a companion sitting in front of him with the

open book fastened to his shoulders, where the other is able to read

it. Or if the wily teacher makes the patient come out from among the

desks in order to prevent him from receiving any help, his companions

may make signs to him, perhaps by means of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.

Then we find the teacher using the blackboard as a pretext for turning

the pupil with his face to the wall, the while she keeps her burning

eyes fixed on the class. Thus the patient is isolated. "Nothing

escapes" a clever teacher; she is capable of surprising a rolled-up

note slipped by one child under the desk of another; and of

confiscating a piece of blotting-paper which two children interchange

on the pretext of using it, when they have written upon it.

For this reason properly constructed desks should be open in front,

because otherwise it is so easy to pass things under them; whereas

with desks which are not only hygienic but "moral," such subterfuges

would be difficult to carry out.

"Indeed, these desks which are open in front also facilitate

surveillance of the scholars from the moral point of view;

because, always seated, placed side by side without any

possibility of spiritual communion, their heads dazed by the

continuous vociferation of the teacher, these children very

often contract vicious habits, such as onanism, which

originate in the school itself. These are less openly

discussed than spinal curvature, myopia, and exhaustion from

overwork, but the evil has long been recognized, even before

science entered upon the scene to make a study of the

maladies engendered by school conditions. The sedentary habit

impedes circulation in the pelvic basin, and induces

stagnation of the blood; moreover, what other outlet is

provided for the nervous energies? And the evil spreads in an

alarming manner.

"But open desks make subterfuges impossible. All moral

devices for combating abuses flourish in the school. In the

schools in Rome, for example, order and surveillance are so

perfect that children are not even allowed to go to the

lavatory. It is well known what disorder was caused by this

'question of the lavatory.' If a child became tired of

sitting still or listening to the teacher, he asked leave to

go out: he was capable of remaining shut up in the lavatory

for a considerable time, in order to raise his spirits a

little in a place he preferred to that he had just left, for

pupils are not allowed to linger in the corridors; the

attendants are always on the watch. But these visits to the

lavatory had become such an abuse that it was decided to take

remedial measures. To-day the physiological time is reckoned

more or less exactly, and at a stated hour the whole of the

pupils, accompanied by the teacher, marching in line two by

two, like soldiers drilling, proceed to the lavatories. The

children of the first file enter in succession and the others

halt, but continue to mark time; as by degrees the children

come out of the lavatory, they form in file again, and begin

once more to mark time together with their companions. The

movement seems, indeed, appropriate to the occasion. We will

say nothing of the state in which the last children in the

file of forty or fifty (who did not go in as a pretence,

since the 'physiological time' had been reckoned) will find

the lavatory; nor will we ask what has become of hygiene. Let

us look at the exterior of the lavatories; they have little

doors with a large space above and a large space below; thus

modesty, and at the same time morality, are safeguarded;

within, nothing but the proper duty can be performed. The

more modern lavatories in schools, however, are made without

seats; with an aperture in the ground to obviate contact and

ensure hygiene: the uncomfortable position prevents a longer

sojourn than is necessary. It appears that this is the best

practical method for installations of this kind in common

lodging-houses, casual wards, and schools."

* * * * *

School is the place where the "social sentiment" is developed; it is

the child's society. As a fact, it is not the school in itself, nor

the intercourse of the scholars, but the education given in the manner

described above which is designed to develop this sentiment. Hence

when my method became known, although I had spoken therein of places

where children live together agreeably and work, I was asked in a

critical tone: "And how will the social sentiment be developed if each

child works independently?" We must therefore conclude that this

system of regimentation in which the children do everything at the

same moment, even to visiting the lavatory, is supposed to develop the

social sentiment. The society of the child is therefore the antithesis

of adult society, where sociability implies a free and well-bred

interchange of courtesies and mutual aid, although each individual

attends to his own business; in the society of the child it implies

identity of physical attitudes and uniformity of collective actions,

together with a total disregard of all pleasant and courteous

relations; mutual help which is a virtue in adult society, is here

considered the gravest fault, the worst offense against discipline.

Modern methods of instruction recommend the teacher to conclude every

lesson with a moral, like the classic fables. Whether the lesson

treats of birds, butter, or triangles, it must always end by pointing

a moral. "The teacher must miss no opportunity," says the pedagogist;

"moralization is the true aim of the school."

"Mutual aid" is the burden of the pedagogistic refrain, for the

_leitmotif_ of all moralities, not excepting that of the school, is

"to love one another." To exhort children to help one another and show

mutual affection the teacher perhaps adopts a psychological method in

three periods distinguishing perception, association, and volition; or

she may adopt the method of cause in its relation to effect; this is

left to her discretion; but she must always keep her class in a state

of "discipline" and "goodness," for these are its essential

constituents.

But the factor which affords the most substantial support to the

educative organism of the school is the system of prizes and

punishments.

Pedagogists make this the main feature of their treatment. All admit

more or less the need of some external stimulus to induce

school-children to study and behave well, although some are of opinion

that it would be well to instil into the child the love of good for

its own sake, and that a sense of duty rather than the fear of

punishment should deter from evil. This opinion is generally

recognized as lofty, but impracticable. To imagine that the child

could be stimulated to work merely by a desire to do his duty is a

"pedagogic absurdity"; nor is it credible that a child could persevere

in the paths of industry and good conduct merely with a view to a

distant end, such as the fine social position he might some day win

for himself in the world by means of study. Some direct stimulus, some

immediate token of approval, is necessary. True, it has been deemed

advisable to make punishments less rigorous and the bestowal of prizes

less ostentatious, and such modifications have now become general.

Indeed, those fustigations and corporal punishments which not very

long ago were usual in prisons, lunatic asylums, and schools have been

abandoned in schools; the penalties of to-day are slight: bad marks,

reproofs, unfavorable reports to the family, suspension of attendance.

The ceremonial prize-giving is also a thing of the past, the solemn

function at which the scholars mounted the platform as in triumph to

receive their prizes from the hands of the noblest and most

distinguished persons of the neighborhood, who accompanied the

presentation with amiable words of encouragement while the public,

consisting mainly of proud and agitated parents, murmured their

approval and admiration. All these superfluities have been abolished;

the prize, the object, is simply handed to the winner in an ante-room

of the school.

The important matter is that the child shall receive the object he has

deserved. The medals, too, with which pupils were formerly able to

adorn their breasts, are now abolished; the prize is a book, a useful

object. A sense of the practical has found its way even into our

schools. Perhaps the good children will presently be rewarded by the

presentation of a piece of soap, or the material for an apron, in a

_tête-a-tête_ between giver and recipient.

But a prize there must needs be.

However, throughout all the discussions of the pedagogists and the

evolutions of punishments and prizes, no one has dreamt of asking

himself what is the good which is rewarded, and what the evil which is

punished, or whether, before urging children on to an undertaking, it

would not be well to cast a glance at the undertaking itself, and

judge of its value.

At last positive studies on the school question have shed sufficient

light to enable us to construct a new base for the old question. Is it

well to allure children by a prize, to incite them to exhaust their

nervous systems and injure their eyesight? And is it well to check

them by means of punishments, when, urged by an overpowering instinct

of self-preservation, they seek to avoid these perils? At last we all

know that the prize-winners of the elementary schools are the mediocre

pupils of the high school; that the prize-winners of the high school

are the exhausted students of the academies; and that those who gain

prizes throughout their school career are those who are most easily

vanquished in the battle of life.

Knowing this, is it well to stimulate on the one hand and to repress

on the other, to the end that children may remain in this ruinous

condition? Are not the perils of school life already serious enough,

without adding stimuli to induce them to throw themselves into these

perils with all their energies? A number of deeply interesting

comparative studies have been made of late on clever and stupid

school-children, those who gain prizes and those who incur punishment.

Certain anthropologists, somewhat ingenious in matters of science,

have studied the question in such good faith that they have even

proposed to inquire whether the more brilliant prize-winners show

evidences of morphological superiority, congenital marks of a natural

privilege, a brain more highly developed than that of mediocrity. On

the contrary, anthropological notes reveal their physical inferiority,

i.e. their low stature and their remarkably narrow chest measurements.

Their heads are in no way distinguished from those of less clever

scholars; many of them wear spectacles.

Thus we get a clearer picture of the life of a child who diligently

performs all his tasks with a dread of making mistakes which may

become positive anguish; who learns all his lessons, thus of necessity

depriving himself of a walk, a saunter, an hour of rest. Obsessed by

anxiety to be the first, or even stimulated by illusions of a future

more brilliant than that of his companions, exhilarated by the praises

and prizes which make him believe himself to be "one of the hopes of

his country," and the "solace of his parents," he rushes forward to

future impotence, as if dazed by a fairy vision. His careless

companions, on the other hand, have well-developed chests, and are the

merriest boys in the class.

Other types of clever pupils are those who are helped at home by

tutors, or educated mothers who devote themselves to their

advancement; while other types of dull pupils, often punished, are

poor children who are not made welcome in their homes, but are left to

themselves, sometimes in the streets; or who are already working for

their bread in the early hours of the morning, before coming to

school. In an inquiry I made, the children who were praised and passed

without examination were in the category of those who brought a good

luncheon with them; the children at the bottom of the class, who

incurred punishments, were those who brought no provisions, or only a

piece of bread.

It must not be supposed that the above is an exhaustive enumeration of

the causes which contribute to the deceptive phenomenon connected with

prizes and punishments; but it is obvious that a clearly defined road

has been marked out which should lead us to comprehension of the

facts.

Prizes and punishments are not merely final episodes, they are

exponents of the moral organization of the school. Just as the

annulment of the examination of a pupil who has helped a companion is

but the extreme instance of "an education" which tends to isolate the

individual in his egotism; so the prize and the punishment are the

extreme incidents of the constant principle on which the organism of

the school is based: emulation. The principle is that children, seeing

others cleverer than themselves, who get high marks, praises and

prizes, will be stimulated to imitate these, to do better, to overtake

their companions. Thus what may be described as a kind of mechanism is

evolved, which uplifts the whole school, not merely towards work, but

towards effort. It is the moral purpose to accustom children to

"suffer."

Let us take an example of such emulation. When the observant doctor

entered the school, his attention was directed to the organs of sense,

and he found many slightly deaf children among the pupils. Hearing

less than the others, they appeared less intelligent, and as a

"punishment" they had been relegated to the desks at the very back of

the schoolroom. They were often set to repeat because they had never

learnt to write "from dictation," and made incredible and unpardonable

mistakes. Emulation and punishment had alike proved powerless; not

even when they were placed as far as possible from the teacher did

these deaf children improve! There were also lively children, who were

repeatedly punished to induce them to keep still, and who were vainly

exhorted to imitate companions whose conduct was exemplary. A large

number of children suffering from adenoids, who consequently breathed

through their mouths, and were incapable of fixing their attention,

got bad marks and punishments because they were never attentive;

meanwhile this defect of the open mouth was vainly combated by the

kind and careful teacher, who multiplied moral tales concerning the

ugliness of children who keep their mouths open, and, terrible to

relate, even sit with their fingers in their mouths!

Many of the lazy children, who would not do the gymnastic exercises

like the rest, who made pretexts for stopping and thus set a bad

example, were found to be suffering from heart affections, anemia, or

liver complaints. Yet one of the most brilliant examples of emulation

is that of the gymnastic competitions, competitions in endurance and

competitions in speed. The children are encouraged to continue the

exercise as long as possible; or to cover the ground in the shortest

possible time; here effort is the basis of the exercise. Now

anthropological study has revealed the fact that there are two

principal types of constitution: one in which the chest predominates,

the other in which the legs predominate. When the chest is well

developed and the lungs and heart strong, endurance is more natural

than agility; the opposite holds good of the other type, in which, by

reason of the length of the legs and the slightness of the chest,

agility prevails. No emulation can change one type into the other.

Morphological study of the child, whose body is transformed in

successive ages, should be the basis for the organization of gymnastic

exercises, and not emulation. That which has its origin in the body,

as constitution or disease, should be considered in the body. No

miracle can be performed by the sentiment of emulation.

This prejudice in favor of emulation is so deeply rooted that when, in

1898, I began my campaign in Italy to procure the formation of

separate classes for deficient children in connection with the

elementary schools, the principle of emulation was urged against me:

the deficient children would no longer be helped by the example of the

clever, industrious children; and when these weaklings had been

deprived of the stimulus of emulation, they would accomplish

absolutely nothing.

But emulation can only avail among equals. When "competitions" take

place, "champions" are chosen. To a deficient child, the example of a

clever companion is merely humiliating; his inferiority, his impotence

are perpetually cast in his teeth by the victorious career of his

comrade. He becomes more and more discouraged as the zealous teacher

scolds and punishes him for his weakness and points out the radiant

example offered by the strong. What would give him a ray of light, a

glimpse of hope, would be for him to see the possibility of doing

something within the limits of his own powers which might nevertheless

have a value of its own; to penetrate into some sphere where he too

might compete with some one and be encouraged. Then he would be like

others, he would be exhilarated and comforted; and the feeble flower

within him might expand. He has infinitely greater need of

encouragement, solace, and external stimuli to excite him to activity

than the normal child.

And what happens to the normal child, the clever boy, who serves as an

example to his inferiors? Whom does he emulate? Who carries him along

that he may ascend? If all need to be drawn upwards in order to climb,

who is to draw him who stands above all? This time the question is out

of place. In his case, the impulse will be retrograde. Here we have

the thrice happy type of him who competes with his inferiors! This

makes me think of a description given by Voisin of a competition

arranged by one of the idiots in his asylum. This boy, who was very

tall, selected all the shortest and youngest of the idiots, and

challenged them to a race; he always came in first and was delighted.

Such an example is not, however, peculiar to Voisin's asylum; it is

the _moral attitude_ of all who are ambitious, but idle, and are

anxious to outshine others without too much fatigue, without

perfecting themselves, counting much on the phenomena of contrast.

Thus we find a fluent orator seeking to be preceded by an unskilful

speaker; and pretty girls who have not the means to adorn themselves

and thus set off their beauty, are fond of going about with their

plainer friends.

I have read an amusing fable, which was evidently a parody of this

phenomenon. There was once a king who had such a long nose that it was

positively ridiculous. When a neighboring king proposed to visit him,

he was much perturbed, being ashamed to exhibit his defect to a

neighboring people. Then the prime minister thought of an expedient,

and propounded this practical plan to the king: "Your Majesty, on this

occasion let your noble court retire; I will search throughout the

kingdom for the men with the most prominent noses, and for the time

they shall constitute your court." This was done; and such noses

appeared on the scene that that of the king seemed quite normal in

comparison. Thus the august colleague noticed that the court was

remarkable for its noses, but did not perceive that the king had a

nose of abnormal length.

These stories of the competition between idiots and the court of noses

make us smile; but the normal competitions between our children are

not matters for mirth. The healthy children who, when side by side

with the deaf, the sickly, and the deficient are only conscious of

their superiority; the fortunate children who have the help of

educated mothers and are brought into contact with poor, unhappy,

neglected children, merely feel that they are examples to these;

well-fed children refreshed by a long sleep in comfortable beds,

placed side by side with little busy workers who get up before sunrise

to sell newspapers, or deliver milk, and arrive at school already

tired, imagine themselves to be superior to these, and to serve as a

"stimulus" to them "to do better"--all these normal children are on

the wrong moral track. They are being misled into an unconscious

acceptance of injustice. They are being deceived. They are not better,

they are only more fortunate than their companions; their kindly

hearts should be led to recognize the truth; to pity the, sickly, to

console the unfortunate, to admire the heroes. It is not their fault

if, instead of all this, vanity, ambition, and error spring up in

their hearts.

It is true that the teacher makes an attempt to educate their hearts

aright, reminding them of ailing, unfortunate, and heroic children by

means of moral stories which all learn without distinction in the same

manner. She lays stress upon incidents illustrating the good feeling

of mankind. Yet no one ever considers that the ailing, the

unfortunate, and the heroic are all there among them, since all

children go to school; but they cannot communicate with each other and

recognize each other; and thus these subjects who are actually present

are distinguished only as the ones who receive all the scoldings,

punishments, and humiliations while their more fortunate companions

lord it over them arrogantly as their examples, gaining prizes and

praise, but losing their own souls in the process.

In this moral confusion, where man "loses sight of God," as in hell,

what strong spirit is stimulated to develop all his precious

activities and cultivate his own heart? All are lost, the strong as

well as the weak; few indeed are those who possess an individual

instinct capable of saving them, who do not succumb to the temptations

of prizes, threats of punishment, to the continual suggestions of

emulation and of fraudulent rivalry, and who come out with their

powers still intact and their hearts pure, sensible of the great facts

of humanity. Those who pass through the ordeal untouched by its empty

glories and persecutions, and set forth on the path of a productive

life which attains to beauty and goodness by internal energy and is

susceptible to truth--these are they whom we hail as men of genius, as

benefactors of the human race.

* * * * *

When we come to analyze good and evil positively, we feel that in

_reality_ much of the "evil" we theoretically deplore in individuals

may be resolved into external causes. The depravity of the masses

resolves itself into the combined effects of pauperism and

drunkenness; crime into degeneration; the faults of children and

scholars arise from the darkness of prejudice. But as these causes are

not absolute and immutable, but are related to transitory states which

may be altered, the ancient philosophic conception of evil resolves

itself partially into so many social questions and actions. To give

work and combat the drink habit--this it is which contributes largely

to morality by removing so many causes of evil. To undertake the

regeneration and education of the degenerate, is to combat crime, and

therefore to promote morality.

Thus, if in schools the dense darkness of prejudice is the cause of

innumerable moral ills, to reform the school by the help of natural

principles will be the first step towards its moralization.

It is in this direction, then, that we must face the great question,

not by analytical examination of the system of prizes and punishments,

of the principle of emulation, of the most opportune and practical

manner of inculcating moral principles, nor by the creation of new

decalogues. That which we have hitherto regarded so lightly as a

didactic problem is, on the contrary, a great and veritable social

question.

When a moral problem is limited to the _effects_ of preventable

causes, it is merely apparent. Thus, for instance, let us imagine for

a moment a populous quarter, where pauperism is rampant and the poor

will fight for a piece of bread; where dirt, drinking-shops and civic

neglect degrade the inhabitants; where all, men and women alike, give

way readily to vice. Our sole impression of such people at the moment

is: "What wicked people!" On the other hand, let us take the modern

quarter of an industrious city, where the houses of the people are

hygienic, where the workpeople receive a fair remuneration for their

labor, where popular theaters, conducted with a true sense of art,

have taken the place of public-houses, and let us enter one of the

restaurants where workpeople are enjoying their food in a quiet,

civilized fashion; we should be inclined to say: "What good people!"

But have they really become good? Those who ameliorated their social

conditions were the good people. But the individuals who have

benefited by their exertions "live better"; they are not, strictly

speaking, "more meritorious" in the moral sense.

If they were, we should only need to imagine a society in which the

economic problem had been solved, to behold men who have become

"moral" solely in virtue of having been born in a different age. It is

obvious that the moral question is a very different one; it is a

question of life, a question of "nature," and one which cannot be

solved by external eventualities. Men may be more or less fortunate,

they may be born in more or less civilized surroundings, but they will

always be men confronted by a "moral question," which goes down deeper

than fortune or civilization.

It is very easy to be convinced that the so-called "naughtiness" of

children is the expression of a "struggle for spiritual existence";

they want to make the men within them live, and we try to hinder them;

we offer them the poisons of darkness and error. They fight for their

spiritual bread as the poor fight for material bread; and degrade

themselves by falling victims to our seductions just as the poor

degrade themselves by succumbing to the fascination of alcohol; and in

this struggle and this degradation children have revealed themselves

as the "poor" and "needy," neglected and destitute. None has ever

demonstrated more clearly than they that "man does not live by bread

alone," and that the "question of bread" is not the real "question of

man." All the suffering, all the struggles, all the claims of society

in the past with regard to bodily needs are repeated here with amazing

clarity in connection with spiritual needs. Children want to grow, to

perfect themselves, to nourish their intelligence, to develop their

internal energies, to form their characters and to these ends they

need to be liberated from slavery, and to conquer "the means of life."

It is not enough to nourish their bodies: they are hungry for

intellectual food; the clothes which protect their limbs from the cold

are not enough for children: they demand the garments of strength and

the ornaments of grace to protect and adorn the spirit. Why have we

adults stifled these wants till we have almost come to believe that

the economic question is the true solution of the problem of human

life? And why have we never imagined that, even after such a solution,

strife, anger, despair, and degradation might reappear as a result of

higher desires left unsatisfied? Such strife, anger, despair and

degradation we encounter continually in the children of to-day, who

are nevertheless well fed, well clothed and well warmed, in accordance

with the standards of perfected physical hygiene.

To respond to the intellectual needs of man in such a manner as to

satisfy them is to make an important contribution to morality. Indeed

our children, when they have been able to occupy themselves freely

with intelligent work, and have also been free to respond to their

internal wants, to occupy themselves for a long time with chosen

stimuli, to perform abstract operations when they were sufficiently

mature, to concentrate their minds in meditation, have shown that

order and serenity have been evolved within them; and after this,

grace of movement, the capacity for enjoyment of the beautiful,

sensibility to music, and finally, amenity in their relations to each

other, have sprung up like a jet of water from an internal fount.

All this has been a work of "liberation." We have not made our

children moral by any special means; we have not taught them to

"overcome their caprices" and to sit quietly at work; we have not

inculcated calm and order by exhorting them to follow the examples of

others, and explaining how necessary order is to man; we have not

lectured them on mutual courtesy, to instil the respect due to the

work of others, and the patience with which they should wait in order

not to infringe the rights of others. There has been none of all this;

we have merely set the child free, and helped him to "live." It is

_he_ who has taught _us_ "how" the child lives, and what other needs

he has besides his material wants.

Thereupon an activity formerly unknown among little children, together

with the virtues of industry, perseverance and patience, manifested

themselves amidst crises of joy, in an atmosphere of habitual

serenity. These children had entered upon the paths of peace. An

obstacle hitherto opposed to nature had been removed.

And just as men satisfied by nourishing food and removed from the

dangers of poisons, have grown calmer, and have shown themselves

capable of preferring the higher pleasures to base and degrading

indulgence, so the child, his internal needs satisfied, has entered

the sphere of serenity and has shown his tendency to ascend.

All this, however, has not touched the roots of the moral question;

but it has stripped and purged it of all the dross that encumbered it.

The more fully a man's wants are satisfied, the happier he is; but he

is not already "full of merit," as we divine that a man gifted with a

lofty moral sense ought really to be. Rather have we deprived man of

his merits; "goodness" has disappeared as well as "wickedness" at the

advent of social reform. When we discovered that many forms of

goodness were forms of good fortune, and many forms of evil-doing were

forms of misfortune, we left man absolutely naked, stripped bare by

truth. He must then take up his real life at its roots and "acquire

merit." At this point he will begin to be born anew morally, emerging

from the pure and essential chrysalis of the "hygienically" living

man.

* * * * *

If the whole structure of our educative method starts from an act of

concentrated attention to a sensory stimulus, and builds itself up on

the education of the senses, limiting itself to this, it would

evidently not take the whole man into consideration. For if man does

not live by material bread alone, neither does he live solely by

intellectual bread.

The stimuli of the environment are not only the objects, but also the

persons, with whom our relations are not merely sensory. In fact, we

are not content to admire in them that beauty to which the Greeks were

so sensitive, or to listen to their speech or their song. The true

relations between man and man, though they are initiated by means of

the senses, are established in sympathy.

The "moral sense" of which positive science speaks is to a great

extent the sense of sympathy with our fellows, the comprehension of

their sorrows, the sentiment of justice: the lack of these sentiments

convulses normal life. We cannot become moral by committing codes and

their applications to memory, for memory might fail us a thousand

times, and the slightest passion might overcome us; criminals, in

fact, even when they are most astute and wary students of codes, often

violate them; while normal persons, although entirely ignorant of the

laws, never transgress them, owing to "an internal sense which guides

them."

Positive science includes in the term "moral sense" something complex

which is, at the same time, sensibility to public opinion, to law, and

to religion; and multiplying it thus, it does not clearly define in

what "moral sense" consists. We talk of it intuitively; each one has

within himself something that "responds" to the appellation; and by

this internal response he must understand and decide in what this

"moral sense" consists. But religion is simple and precise: it calls

this internal sense which lies at the root of life, Love. Social laws

do not enter into this any more than does the entire universe. Love is

the contact between the soul and God; and when this exists, all the

rest is vanity. Good springs therefrom naturally, as sunbeams radiate

from the sun. Creation itself has been given in charge of this

wellspring of love, and it is love which maintains it, as the

contribution of the creature to the provident forces of nature.

Those biological studies which seek to probe the secrets of nature

have also recognized love as the key of life. Scientists have at last

perceived, after much research, this most evident fact: that it is

love which preserves the animal species, and not the "struggle for

existence." In fact, the struggle for existence tends to destroy; and

as regards survival, this is not the exclusive privilege of the

"fittest," as was at first supposed. But existence is indeed bound up

with love. Indeed, the individuals who struggle and conquer are

adults; but who is it that protects the new-born creature and infant

life in process of formation? If a hard and horny covering is the

natural protection of his species, he does not possess it; if it is

strength of muscle, he is weak; if it is tusks, he is without them; if

it is agility, he cannot yet move; if it is fecundity, he is not yet

mature. Therefore, all species should have become extinct, for there

is none so strong but that he once was weak; and there is no infancy

which is not more feeble than any adult life. It is love which

protects all this weakness, and explains "survival." Maternal love,

indeed, is studied to-day with the deepest attention by our scientists

as a natural phenomenon. If the struggle for existence presented to us

a uniform picture of destruction, the phenomena of maternal love are

to-day revealed to us in the richest and most fascinating forms, which

almost represent the occult and sentimental aspect of the marvelous

varieties of forms in nature. It is seen at last to be one of the

"fundamental characteristics of the species," which should be

recognized by all students.

Even insects, which Fabre has described with such a wealth of detail,

small and remote as they are from ourselves, exhibit wonderful

phenomena of maternal love. One of the first articles published by a

naturalist on these phenomena, _La Psychologie d'une Araignée_ (The

Psychology of a Spider) might serve as the motive of a drama. The

spider, as is well known, makes a bag of threads, which she generally

attaches to the backs of leaves, and in it she deposits and preserves

her eggs; she gets into it herself together with the eggs, to protect

the treasure of the species. If the bag should be broken at any point,

the spider promptly repairs it. By way of experiment, a spider was

taken out of the bag, and kept at a distance for twenty days. What is

a spider? A few cubic millimetres of a dark, flabby substance without

brain or heart, whose life is so short that twenty days constitute a

very long interval for it; but this small creature never relaxed her

efforts to escape, and her agitation never abated; finally, when she

was liberated at the end of the twenty days, she fled to the bag, hid

herself in it, and repaired the walls. Where was all this love and

memory concentrated? This mother-spider was then removed from the

nest, and another spider was introduced, which at once adopted the

offspring, acted the mother, defended the nest from attack, and

repaired the walls if they were damaged. There must therefore be a

maternal instinct in the species, independent of actual maternity. But

when the real mother approached the adopted bag, not only did the

foster-mother make no attempt to defend it, but she fled and gave up

her place. By what phenomenon of telepathy did the visitor concealed

in the bag feel the maternal power approaching? The following was the

end of the experiment: the little spiders were hatched, and remained

in the bag together with their mother; the experimenter tore the bag

to see what would happen; the little spiders fled in every direction,

but the mother remained crouching on the tattered fragments of the

nest, and died, almost violently, killed by the destruction of her

offspring. Maternal love, therefore, does not require complicated

organs; it needs neither brain, heart, nor senses, and seems almost to

exist without matter; it is the force which life assumes to protect

and preserve itself, a force which seems to exist before and to

accompany creation, like that wisdom of which Solomon speaks: "The

Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of

old.... When there were no depths, I was brought forth.... Then I was

by him as a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing

always before him.... Whoso findeth me findeth life."

* * * * *

But long before biologists perceived that love is the powerful force

which protects the species, and explains its survival, religion had

pointed to love as the force which preserves life. In order to live,

it is not enough to be created; the creature must also be loved. This

is the law of nature. "He who loveth not ... abideth in death." When

Moses gave the decalogue which was to guide the Hebrews to salvation,

he preceded it by the law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all

thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." When the Pharisees came to

Christ, asking Him to declare the Law, He answered: "Do you not know?

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"; as if to say: the law is

evident and unique, it is the law of life, and for this reason must

always have existed, from the very beginning of the world. But to St.

Peter, who was to be the head of the new religion, love the transition

from the old to the new order was more fully explained: "Love," said

Christ, "even as I have loved you," that is to say, not as you are

capable of loving, but as I am capable of loving. There is a deep gulf

between the manner in which men are able to love themselves and that

in which Christ can love men. Men often rush headlong to their own

perdition; they are capable of confounding good with evil, life with

death, food with poison. Little confidence can therefore be felt in

the injunction: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." And it was in truth a

new commandment that Jesus gave, when He said: "Love even as I have

loved you."

Moses, indeed, had been obliged to supplement the law of love by a

decalogue of practical injunctions: "Honor thy father and mother, Thou

shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false

witness, Thou shalt not covet." Christ, on the other hand taught that

it will be enough if we do not demand measure for measure in love, and

that there will no longer be any need of the support of rules. We must

let the measure overflow; and behold! this in itself opens to man the

door of salvation. "If ye love them which love you, what thank have

ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to

them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do

even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what

thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners to receive as much

again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for

nothing again, and ye shall be the children of the Highest" (St. Luke

vi, 32-35).

Set yourselves free from all bonds and all measurements and lay hold

of the one thing needful: to be alive, to feel; this was the

revelation made by Christ when, like Moses, He went up into the

mountain, but without hiding Himself from the people, calling the

crowd indeed to follow Him, and openly expounding all the secrets of

truth: Blessed are those who feel, even if they suffer, for to suffer

is to feel, to live. Blessed are those who weep, blessed are those who

hunger for righteousness, blessed are the persecuted, blessed are

those whose hearts are pure and free from darkness. For he who feels

shall be satisfied; but he who cannot feel is lost; woe to those who

lie down in comfort, woe to those who are full, woe to those who

laugh--they have lost their "sensibility." And then all is vanity.

What is the use of knowing all the moral laws, and even practising

them, if the heart be dead? It is as if we should whiten the tomb of a

corpse. The moral, self-satisfied man, without a heart, is a tomb.

* * * * *

=The education of the moral sense=.--Thus the conception of moral

education, like that of intellectual education, must include a basis

of feeling, and be built up thereupon, if we are not to lead the child

towards illusion, falsity and darkness. The education of the senses,

and liberty to raise the intelligence according to its own laws on the

one hand; the education of feeling, and spiritual liberty to raise

oneself, on the other--these are two analogous conceptions and two

parallel roads.

Consider our position in relation to children. We are their "stimuli,"

by which their feeling, which is developing so delicately, should be

exercised.

For the intellect, we have the various objects, colors, forms, etc.;

but for the spirit, the objects are ourselves. The pure souls of

children must derive nourishment from us; they should fix themselves

on us with their hearts, as their attention is fixed upon some

favorite stimulus; and by loving us they should exalt themselves in

their intimate spiritual creation.

When interest leads the child to take the box of colors, and keeps him

absorbed in them, the objects lend themselves passively to his

manipulation, but the colors reflect the luminous rays of the sun,

which then strike the virgin retinae of eyes not as yet completely

matured and adapted. So, too, when the child's heart turns to us, and

fixes itself, asking nourishment from our souls, we ought to be

always ready, like passive objects, inasmuch as we should never,

through our egotism, fail to respond to the child's needs; we should

respond with all our intimate energies, to reflect upon him the

luminous rays required by his pure soul, as yet unadapted to life.

We ought not to call him by name, and offer him our affection,

inviting him to accept our help; but, like the material objects which

attract him by their smoothness, their luster, and their varied and

interesting forms, and by ocular demonstration of the means of lofty

intellectual exercise, as in the colored alphabets and the rods which

contain the first secrets of numeration--we, too, should wait; not

coldly, but rather making the child feel that we contain a rich

material which is at his disposal, ready to be taken as soon as he

stretches out his hand to grasp it. Our "response" to the child should

be as full, as prompt and as complete as that of the objects which he

may manipulate, but which at every touch give an upward impetus to the

intellectual life of the child.

How many persons must have noted that on some occasion when they have

caressed children, the little ones have retreated, as if repelled and

offended; and many must also have remarked that when the affectionate

impulse of a child has been checked, he shrinks into himself,

humiliated, like the mimosa when touched. Now the respect we owe to

the spiritual liberty of the child should manifest itself as follows:

we must never force our caresses on him, greatly as we may be

attracted by his fascinating graces; nor must we ever repel his

outbursts of affection, even when we are not disposed to receive them,

but must respond with sincere and delicate devotion. We are the

"objects" of his love, the objects by means of which he is organizing

his life. The most perfect teachers and mothers will be those who will

take the didactic material for their model, and imitate this by

filling themselves in every sense with moral riches and being full of

response in every detail; passive in abnegation, yet active as

wellsprings of affection. And if all the sensorial objects combine all

possible vibrations accessible to man--the vibrations of light and

color, as also those of sound and heat, so too should they combine in

themselves all the vibrations of internal sensibility, waiting for the

thirsty soul to choose among them.

It may be asked: And how shall we make the child love us; how shall we

make the child "feel"?

If a child could not see colors he would be blind; and no one could

give him sight. And so if the child could not feel, no one could give

him sensibility; but since Nature has united mother and child not only

by the flesh, but even more closely by love, it is indubitable that at

birth the child brings with him not only flesh but love. Now he who

loves, even though it be only a single object, has in himself a sense

which is capable of receiving impressions _ad infinitum_; he who sees

an object possesses sight, therefore he who sees an object will see.

He who loves a mother or a son, "loves"; that internal sense vibrates,

and certainly not only to the object present to it at the moment.

Even that poor spider, artificially deposited in the bag of another

mother, adopted and defended the alien eggs, because the spider is

capable of maternal love.

Therefore the child whom his mother has loved and who was helped by

that love, has that "internal sense" by means of which he is capable

of love. The "human objects" which present themselves to that sense

have reflections from it.

We should "wait to be seen" by him; the day will come when, among all

the intellectual objects, the child will perceive our spirit, and will

come to us to take his ease within us. It will be to him a new birth,

akin to that other awakening, when some one of the objects first

attracted him and held him. It is impossible that that day, that

moment, should not arrive. We have performed a delicate work of love

towards the child, presenting to him the means which satisfy his

intellectual needs, without making ourselves felt, keeping ourselves

in the background, but always present and ready to help. We have given

great satisfaction to the child by succoring him; when he needed to

clarify the order of his mind still further by language, we offered

him the names of things, but only these, retiring at once without

asking anything from him, without putting forward anything from

ourselves. We have revealed to him the sounds of the alphabet, the

secret of numbers, we have put him into relation with things but

restricting ourselves to what was useful to him, almost concealing our

body, our breathing, our person.

When he felt a desire to choose, he never found an obstacle in us;

when he occupied himself for a long time with an exercise, we were

careful to protect the tranquillity of his work, as a mother protects

the refreshing sleep of her babe.

When he made his first plunge into abstraction, he felt nothing in us

but the echo of his joy.

The child found us always indefatigable when he called upon us, almost

as if our mission to him were to offer him what he requires, just as

it is the mission of the flower to give perfume without limit or

intermission.

He found with us a new life, no less sweet than the milk he drew from

his mother's breast, with which his first love was born. Therefore he

will one day become sensitive to this being who lives to make him

live, from whose self-sacrifice his freedom to live and expand is

derived.

And undoubtedly the day will come when his spirit will become

sensitive to our spirit; and then he will begin to taste that supreme

delight which lies in the intimate contact of soul with soul, and our

voice will no longer be heard by his ear alone. The power to obey us,

to communicate his conquests to us, to share his joys with us, will be

the new element in his life. We shall see the child who suddenly

becomes aware of his companions, and is almost as deeply interested as

we are in their progress and their work. It will be delightful to

witness such a scene as that of four or five children sitting with

spoons arrested over the smoking bowl, and no longer sensible to the

stimulus of hunger because they are absorbed in contemplation of the

efforts of a very little companion who is trying to tuck his napkin

under his chin, and finally succeeds in doing so; and then we shall

see these spectators assume an expression of relief and pride, almost

like that of a father who is present at the triumph of his son.

Children will recompense us in the most amazing manner by their

progress, their spiritual effusions, and their sweet obedience. The

fruit they will cause us to gather will be abundant beyond anything we

can imagine. Thus it comes to pass when the secrets of life are

interpreted. "Give and it shall be given unto you: good measure,

pressed down and shaken together, and running over shall men give into

your bosom."

* * * * *

=The essence of moral education=.--To keep alive and to perfect

psychical sensibility is the essence of moral education. Around it,

as in the intellectual education which proceeds from the exercise of

the senses, _order_ establishes itself: the distinction between right

and wrong is perceived. No one can _teach_ this distinction in all its

details to one who cannot see it. But to see the difference and to

know it are not the same thing.

But in order that "the child may be helped" it is essential that the

environment should be rightly organized, and that good and evil should

be duly differentiated. An environment where the two things are

confused, where good is confounded with apathy and evil with activity,

good with prosperity and evil with misfortune, is not one adapted to

assist the establishment of order in the moral consciousness, much

less is one where acts of flagrant injustice and persecutions occur.

Under such conditions the childish consciousness will become like

water which has been made turbid, and more poisonous than is alcohol

to the life of the foetus. Order may perhaps be banished for ever,

together with the clarity of the consciousness; and we cannot tell

what may be the consequences to the "moral man." "Whoever shall offend

one of these little ones, it were better for him ... that he were

drowned in the depth of the sea." "If thy hand or thy foot offend

thee, cut it off and cast it from thee."

However, the properly organized environment is not everything. Even in

intellectual education it was not the spontaneous exercise alone which

refreshed the intelligence; but further, the lessons of the teacher

which confirmed and illuminated the internal order in process of

development. On these occasions she said: "This is red, this is

green." Now she will say: "This is right, this is wrong." And it will

not be unusual to find children like the one described above, who make

good and evil the center of consciousness, and, placing it above

material bread and intellectual nourishment, will propound the

question more vital to them than any other: "What is good? and what is

evil?" But we must not forget that moral lessons should be brief; and

that Moses, the father of the sages, in order to inculcate morality,

not in a child, but in a race, gave ten simple commandments, which to

Christ seemed superfluous. It is true, however, that at the head of

these was the "law" of love; and that Christ substituted for the

Decalogue an amplification of that law, which comprises within itself

all legislations and moral codes.

* * * * *

It is possible that good and evil may be distinguished by means of an

"internal sense," apart from cognitions of morality; and in such a

case, of course, the good and evil in question would be absolute; that

is to say, they would be bound up with life itself and not with

acquired social habits. We always speak of a "voice of conscience"

which teaches us from within to distinguish the two things: good

confers serenity, which is order; enthusiasm, which is strength; evil

is signalized as an anguish which is at times unbearable: remorse,

which is not only darkness and disorder, but fever, a malady of the

soul. It is certain that the laws of society, public opinion, material

well-being, and threats of peril would all be powerless to produce

these various sensations. Often serenity is to be found among the

unfortunate, whereas the remorse of Lady Macbeth, who saw the spot of

blood upon her hand, gnawed at the heart of one who had acquired a

kingdom.

It is not surprising that there should be an internal sensation which

warns us of perils, and causes us to recognize the circumstances

favorable to life. If science in these days demonstrates that the

means for preserving even material life correspond to the moral

"virtues," we may conclude that we shall be able to divine what is

necessary to life by means of the internal sensibility. Have not the

biological sciences demonstrated an analogous fact? The biometer

applied to man has made it possible to reconstruct the absolutely

average man, that is to say, the man whose body gives average

measurements in every part; and these average measurements have been

found, by means of the statistical and morphological studies of

medicine, to correspond to "normality." Thus the average man would be

a man so perfectly constructed that he has no morphological

predisposition to disease of the organs. When the figure of a man was

reconstructed in accordance with average biometrical proportions, it

was found to correspond in a remarkable manner to the proportions of

Greek statues. This fact helped to give a new interpretation to

"æsthetic sentiment." It was evidently by means of æsthetic feeling

that the eye of the Greek artist was able to extract the average

measurement of every organ, and to construct a marvelous and exact

whole therewith. The "enjoyment" of the artist was his enjoyment of

the "beautiful"; but he felt even more profoundly that which contained

the triumph of life, and distinguished it from the errors of nature,

which predispose to illness. The triumph of creation can give an

intimate pleasure to him who can "feel it"; errors, even slight, will

then be perceived as discords. Aesthetic education is, in short, akin

to the mathematical approximation towards the absolute average; the

more it is possible to approach to the true measure in its extreme

limits, and the closer we can get to this, the more possible does it

become to have an absolute means of comparison for the consideration

of deviations. The great artist is thus able to recognize the

beautiful in a detail even in the midst of other discordant details;

and the more capable he is of possessing an absolute sense of the

beautiful, the more readily will he perceive any disproportion of

form.

Something of the same sort may happen in the conscience in relation to

the distinction between good and evil; the more so as the good stands

for real utility in life far more directly than the beautiful, and the

evil may be roughly said to represent danger. Have not animals,

perhaps, an acute instinct of self-preservation, which dictates

infinite details of conduct to them, both for the maintenance of life

and for its protection? Dogs, horses, and cats, and generally

speaking, all domestic animals, do not await the imminent earthquake

quietly and unconsciously, as does man, but become agitated. When the

ice is about to crack, the Esquimaux dogs which draw the sleighs

detach themselves one from the other, as if to avoid falling in; while

man can only observe their amazing instinct with stupefaction. Man has

not by nature these intense instincts; it is by means of intelligence

and the sensibility of his conscience to good and evil that he

constructs his defenses and recognizes his perils. And if this

intelligence of his, which is actually capable of transforming the

world, raises him to such a supreme height above animals, to what a

lofty eminence might he raise himself by developing his moral

consciousness!

But on the contrary, man to-day is reduced to the point of asking

himself seriously whether animals are not better than he. When man

wishes to exalt himself, he says: "I am faithful as a dog, pure as a

dove, strong as a lion."

Indeed, animals have always that instinct which is admirable, for it

confers on them a mysterious power; but if man lacks sensibility of

conscience he is inferior to the animals; nothing can then save him

from excesses; he may rush upon his own ruin, upon havoc and

destruction in a manner that might fill animals with stupefaction and

terror; and if it were in their power they might set themselves to

teach man, that he might become equal to themselves. Men without

conscience are like animals without the instinct of self-preservation;

madmen rushing on destruction.

What shall it profit man to discover by means of science the law of

physical self-preservation in its most minute details, if he has no

care for that which corresponds in man to the "instinct" of his own

salvation? If an individual has a perfect knowledge of hygienic

feeding, of the manner in which to weigh himself in order to follow

the course of his own health, of bathing and of massage, but should

lose the instinct of humanity and kill a fellow-creature, or take his

own life, what would be the use of all his care? And if he feels

nothing more in his heart? if the void draws him to it, plunging him

into melancholy, what does his well-nourished and well washed body

avail him?

Good is life; evil is death; the real distinction is as clear as the

words.

Our moral conscience is, like our intelligence, capable of perfection,

of elevation; this is one of the most fundamental of its differences

from the instincts of animals.

The sensibility of the conscience may be perfected, like the æsthetic

sense, till it can recognize and at last enjoy "good," up to the very

limits of the absolute, and also until it becomes sensitive to the

very slightest deviations towards evil. He who feels thus is "saved";

he who feels less must be more vigilant, and do his utmost to preserve

and develop that mysterious and precious sensibility which guides us

in distinguishing good from evil. It is one of the most important acts

of life to examine our own consciences methodically, having as our

source of illumination not only a knowledge of moral codes, but of

love. It is only through love that this sensibility can be perfected.

He whose sense has not been educated cannot judge himself. A doctor,

for example, may be perfectly informed as to the symptoms of a

disease, and may know exactly how cardiac sounds and the resistance of

the pulse are affected in diseases of the heart; but if his ear cannot

perceive the sounds, if his hand cannot appreciate the tactile

sensations which give the pulse, of what use is his science to him?

His power of understanding diseases is derived from his senses; and if

this power is lacking, his knowledge in relation to the sick man is

vanity. The same holds good of the diagnosis of our own conscience; if

we are blind and deaf, innumerable symptoms will pass unobserved, and

we shall not know on what to found our judgment. The tedium of futile

undertakings will oppress us from the first moment.

On the other hand, it is "feeling" which spurs us on towards

perfection.

There have been persons with an extraordinary power of recognizing

good and evil, just as the Greek artists showed extraordinary powers

of recognizing the normal forms of the body under the guidance of the

æsthetic sense. Saint Teresa tells us that when some worldly person

who was not good approached her, she suffered as if she were inhaling

a bad smell. She explained that of course she did not smell anything

at all, in the material sense; but that she actually suffered, not

merely in imagination; her suffering was a real spiritual distress

which she could not tolerate.

More interesting still is the following story which refers to the

early Fathers of the Church, who lived in the desert. "We were seated

at the feet of our Bishop," says one of the monks, "listening to and

admiring his holy and salutary teaching. Suddenly there appeared on

the scene the leading 'mime,' the most beautiful of the public dancers

of Antioch, covered with jewels; her bare legs were almost concealed

by pearls and gold; her head and shoulders were uncovered. A throng of

persons accompanied her; the men of the period never wearied of

devouring her with their eyes. An exquisite perfume which exhaled from

her person scented the air we breathed. When she had passed, our

Father, who had looked steadfastly at her, said to us: 'Were you not

fascinated by so much beauty?' We were all silent. 'I,' continued the

Bishop, 'experienced great pleasure in looking at her, for God has

appointed that some day she shall judge us. I see her,' he added, 'as

a soiled and blackened dove; but this dove shall be washed and shall

fly heavenwards, white as snow.' As a fact, this woman returned and

asked to be baptized. 'My name is Pelagia,' she said, 'or such is the

name my parents gave me, but the people of Antioch call me The Pearl,

because of the quantities of jewels with which my sins have adorned

me.' Two days later she gave all her goods to the poor, put on a hair

shirt, and took up her abode in a cell on Monte Oliveto, which she

never left until her death." (Montalembert, _Les Moines d'Occident_,

vol. 1, p. 86.)

* * * * *

=Our insensibility=.--How remote are we from that delicate sensibility

which responds to evil by suffering and to the good perceived in

others as it were miraculously, by a feeling of pleasure! In our

society it is possible for us to live for a long time with a criminal,

to esteem him, press his hand, etc., until he is at last exposed by

the scandalous discovery of his misdeeds. Then we say: "Who would have

thought it? He always seemed an excellent person."

And yet it is impossible that the criminal showed no signs, no

perversities of feeling, no heartlessness which should have revealed

him to us from the outset. No one will say that we ought all to become

wonderful aesthetes like the Greek sculptors, or as sensitive as the

saints; but if we admit that it is a barbarous thing to pass by the

beauties of art without perceiving them; that it is the mark of

defective civilization to confound horrible coarseness and monstrosity

with ideal beauty, to be unable to distinguish the strident noise of

the tram-car wheels, or the deafening crash of ill-tuned instruments

from the harmonies of Bellini or Wagner; that each of us would blush

for such insensibility, and would conceal it--how is it we do not

perceive that such obtuseness is habitual to us in moral matters? We

see that we are capable of confusing virtuous persons and criminals,

without any foreboding. How is it that so often in the case of

judicial errors, the voice of the innocent did not resound in our

ears, although his trial was a public one, and we allowed him to

languish in prison for years? How is it that goodness should be so

obscure a thing that we confound it with prosperity? How is it that

those rich men of whom the gospel says "Woe unto you, rich men, for ye

have your reward," can think of "improving the morals" of the poor,

without any examination of their own moral lives or the lives of those

belonging to them? almost as if they believed that the rich are

essentially good and the poor essentially bad.

If such darkness as this reigned in the intellectual field, we should

be unable to conceive the form of madness which would present itself

to our eyes. There are confusions in the moral field which it is

impossible to imagine in any other domain of life. If some day the

youth of the nations, more clear-sighted than those of to-day, hear

that the Christmas feast was kept on the battlefields of the European

war, they will understand the origins of the war itself. In such a

situation, David (to whom indeed it would have been inconceivable)

would have accepted the taunt of his enemies as well deserved, when

they asked him: "Where is now thy God?" "We have lost God" would have

been a fitting lamentation. But to celebrate His festival

indifferently under such conditions is to be unconscious of having

lost Him. How long ago did the soul die, and when did the building up

on death begin? What a terrible episode of madness is this monstrous

slaughter, upon which the tree of peace was planted in honor of the

Savior!

Far indeed are we from the delicate sensibility to evil of Santa

Teresa, or the keenness of spiritual vision which enabled the man of

God to see the white dove beneath the soiled feathers of the sinful

woman. The difference is not as that between the taste of a peasant

and that of an artist, but as that between a corpse and a living man.

It is evident that we have suffered death, albeit we are unconscious

of having died.

Here, then, and not in hygiene, must we find the secret of our life.

We have something more corruptible than our bodies, a life more

fragile than our physical life; and the peril of darkness hangs over

us. This is the secret of man.

If man loses the light that leads him on towards a better world, he

falls into an abyss far below all created animals.

He who loves, therefore, will bestow all his care on these

wellsprings of life; how frail are the lungs of a new-born infant, how

easily can an unnatural mother deprive him of air and so suffocate

him! Yet what is this easily accomplished act, which nevertheless

destroys a life, in comparison with the infinitely easier and more

deadly act by which we may procure the death of the soul?

The death of the soul, like that of the body, may be readily

distinguished from a state of insensibility; in vain do we apply a

red-hot iron to a corpse; there is no response.

He who is alive, however, is not only capable of reacting to a

stimulus very much less intense than a red-hot iron; he who lives and

feels may perfect himself--and this is life.

It is enough that souls should "feel." How, then, could they live

quietly amidst evil? If under the windows of our house people were

piling up refuse until we felt that the air was being vitiated, could

we bear this without protesting, and insisting on the removal of that

which was causing us to suffer? If, moreover, we had a child, we

should clamor still more loudly, and should even set to work to clear

away the nuisance with our own hands, in our solicitude for his

health. But if the bodies of mother and child lay dead, they would no

longer be conscious of the pestilential air.

It is characteristic of "life" to purge the environment and the soul

of substances injurious to health. Christ was called "the Lamb that

taketh away the sins of the world," not the Master who preaches, but

He who purifies. And this is the morality that springs from

sensibility: the _action_ of purifying the world, of removing the

obstacles that beset life, of liberating the spirit from the darkness

of death.

The merits of which every man feels he owes an account to his

conscience are not such things as having enjoyed music or made a

discovery; he must be able to say what he has done to save and

maintain life.

These purifying merits, like progress, have no limits.

"Leave all ties and follow _Me_," said Christ to those who asked Him

what they should do.

For man can reinforce his own strength by other powers which will urge

him on upwards towards the infinite; before him who sleeps is the

invisible ladder of Jacob, trodden by angels who call him heavenwards,

that is, towards the supernatural life. Yes, to be _more_ than man.

This is a _dream_ to him who lacks faith; but it is the realizable

goal, the aim of life, to him who has faith.

To Friedrich Nietzsche, the superman was an idea without practical

consequence, strange and erroneous even when tested by the very

theories of evolution which inspired him. His conception offered no

help in overcoming the ills of humanity; rather was it as a chain

binding man to earth, there to seek means to create of himself the man

superior to himself; and thus leading him astray into egotism, cruelty

and folly.

But innumerable saints have felt and acted in accordance with their

profession of faith: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

If, as our poet says, man is "the chrysalis destined to become the

angelic butterfly," there is no doubt as to the road he must take:

spiritually, he must either _ascend_ or _die_.

Hence it is not the whole of life to obey the laws of hygiene,

physical and psychical; but it is only life which can draw from its

environment the means of its own purification and salvation; that

life, however, which is supernatural, asks of love and divine light

the strength necessary for its transformation.

Of a truth, it is not _ecstasy_ which characterizes the saints; it is

the real and victorious struggle of the higher against the lower

nature.

* * * * *

=Morality and religion=.--It is well known that in strong religious

impressions, such as the crises of what is called conversion, the

phenomenon is characterized by "an inner light," an "order" which

suddenly establishes itself, and by means of which that which was

before unseen becomes manifest: the distinction between good and evil,

and hence the revelation of oneself. Indeed, the converted, at the

moment when the revelation takes place, seem little concerned with

divinity, or dogmas, or rites; they are persons given over to a

violent commotion, who seem forgetful of all their physical and

intellectual life, and who are absorbed in contemplation of themselves

in relation to a central point of their consciousness, which seems to

be illuminated by some prodigious radiance. The cry of the convert in

the majority of cases is: "I am a sinner!" It seems as if darkness had

fallen away from him, together with all the evil which was corroding,

weakening, and suffocating him, and which at length he saw, when it

was separated from him, terrible, obscure, and full of hideous

dangers. It is this which agitates him, and makes him weep; it is this

which urges him to seek some one who can understand, comfort, and help

him. The converted want help, as do the newly born; they weep and

struggle like men who are born to a new life, and who are restrained

by no human respect, by no restriction. It is their own life they

feel; and the value of their own life seems to them greater than the

riches and convenience of the whole world. They feel an ecstasy of

relief at having escaped from a great peril; their chief anxiety is

that they may be liberated from the evil that oppresses them. Before

they can take another step forward they are obliged to reconsider the

terrible time when evil was rooted within them, and they felt nothing

of it.

"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 past and lived."

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

This evil had held captive all the treasures of the spirit, which, set

free at last, seem to refresh and reanimate the whole world before

their eyes:

"And what I saw seemed even as a smile.

Irradiating all the universe...."

(Dante's _Paradiso_, Canto XXVII.)

One of the most singular cases of conversion I ever heard described

was the following: A monk, famous for his oratorical gifts, was

preaching in a crowded church to a congregation which was listening to

him with devout admiration. Suddenly he was interrupted by a loud sob,

and a man in the crowd cried aloud, stretching out his hands towards

the pulpit: "I am a great sinner!" The monk, as is usual in such

cases, came to the help of the convert, and received all the

outpourings of that soul, as it stripped itself of the evil which had

been corroding it. Then, curious to know what argument had touched the

heart of this man, he asked him what part of the sermon had specially

borne upon the prodigy. "Ah!" answered the convert, "I never heard a

single word of what you were saying; I entered the church without

knowing why; at that moment you pointed your finger at me

emphatically. Yes, it is true, I cried, I am a sinner, and I felt as

if a heavy cloak of lead which had been oppressing me had fallen from

my shoulders; then an uncontrollable flood of tears rose from my

heart." Thus no intellectual element played any part in this

conversion; it was not a "conviction," nor even new "knowledge," which

had acted; what had happened was purely a spontaneous phenomenon of

the conscience, which, perhaps after an unconscious preparation,

divided the light from the darkness and initiated the creation of the

new man.

The convert feels more clearly than any other that evil is an

"obstacle" to a form of enjoyment higher than the loftiest enjoyments

man can taste. He has not only been purified, but his purification has

transformed him. He is like a diamond embedded in dross and mire which

is suddenly separated from the overlying substances, and brought to

the surface, clear and brilliant; it is not only a purified and

magnificent stone; what really transforms it is the sun, which can now

be reflected in it and make it sparkle. This is the unsuspected

splendor which is added to it naturally, and has nothing to do either

with the dross that has been removed, or with the intrinsic qualities

of the gem. The dross not only defiled it, but prevented it from

encountering the rays which should give it its characteristic beauty.

All devout persons know that evil is a "chain" for us, holding us down

beneath the earth as in a tomb, and that sentiments hostile to love

are so many obstacles which impede our expansion and our free contact

with the divine essence which is within us. The slightest alloy, the

most minute infiltration, suffices to impair our brilliance and to

cause our ejection from the casket of the elect: a single glance which

judges our brother instead of absolving him, a feeling which hardens

our heart against him, or, finally, the envy which generates devouring

hatred and fury.

"The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: ... hatred,

variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings,

witchcraft, murders." To approach the altar with a heart suffering, be

it ever so slightly, from some seductive stimulus against charity is

vain; it is as if a wounded hare should rush to her form, bearing the

arrow that has pierced her through and through; she goes, not to save

herself, but to die in her form. "Likewise thou, if thou bring thy

gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught

against thee ... go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and

then come and offer thy gift."

He who forgives an offense does not perform a logical act of justice,

nor does he benefit the person he forgives; hence it is waste of time

to consider whether the offense deserves pardon or not, and whether

the person who committed it needs absolution from us or not. We must

pardon, not from a sense of justice nor for the benefit of the

offender, but for our own sakes; he who forgives has divested himself

of envy and resentment, of all that oppressed and fettered the spirit,

making it powerless to rise. This is why we must forgive: that so we

may burst the bonds which impede our free movement, our ascent. When

we cut the cable of a balloon, we do not consider whether this is just

towards the earth, and whether the cable deserves it; we do it because

it is necessary, to enable the balloon to rise. He who ascends,

moreover, enjoys the marvels of a spectacle which cannot be enjoyed

on earth. Who would strike a balance between this gain and the

sacrifice of the cable?

Forgive, and you will feel universal absolution rising to you from the

whole world, in token of your ascent _Haec est vera fraternitas, quae

vicit mundi crimina_.

* * * * *

=The religious sentiment in children=.--But few researches have been

made into the crises of conscience and the spontaneous religious

sentiment of children. It is true that of late years, during the

remarkable religious movement which took place in England, most

surprising instances of religiosity in children occurred; it was after

the little Nelly, aged five, asked for the Eucharist on her death-bed

that Pius X allowed it to be administered to children, irrespective of

their age. But the subject forms a very inconsiderable part of the

positive studies of to-day.

The solitary study of this kind which has been brought forward in

public congresses on psychology was that which was considered during

the Premier Congrès International de Pédologie, Bruxelles, août, 1911:

_Quelques observations sur le développement de l'émotion morale et

religieuse chez un enfant_, Ghidionescu, Doct. en Philosophie

(Bucharest). The child who was the subject of observation had received

no religious education whatever. One day he was seen to burst into a

sudden fit of weeping, for no apparent reason. When his mother asked

why he was crying, the child replied: "Because I remember how I saw a

puppy ill-treated two months ago, and at this moment I _feel_ it." A

year and a half later a similar crisis took place. He was looking at

the moon one evening from the window, when he suddenly burst into

tears. "Do not scold me," said the child in great agitation; "while I

was looking at the moon I felt how often I had grieved you, and I

understood that I had offended God."

This interesting study reveals successive phases of a spontaneous

phenomenon of moral consciousness: the first was the revelation of the

lively feeling which provoked a fit of weeping two months after the

event which distressed the child: he _felt_ the sufferings of the

cruelly treated puppy. And a long time after this activity of the

conscience had been initiated comes the establishment of order: the

child distinguishes between good and evil actions, and recognizes the

fact that he has incurred the displeasure of his parents; this

displeasure was probably not very serious, indeed it was so slight

that the child had been unconscious of it at the time; but at the

moment when he is purging himself of these trivial impurities he feels

God: "I understood that I had offended God," he said, and he knew well

that he had not offended his parents. Now, no one had ever talked to

him about God, or trained him to examine his conscience.

During my experience I have had no opportunity of witnessing a similar

cycle of spiritual development. My experiences in religious education

have necessarily been limited hitherto; indeed, in the Children's

House kept by the Franciscan Sisters of the Via Giusti the religious

education was given by the ordinary methods, and it was not possible

to make original studies or observations. On the other hand, the

dominant political party in the municipalities has abolished religion

from the public schools with a sectarian rigor which causes the word

"God" to be feared as bigots fear the word "devil."

My experience has, therefore, been limited to some of the children I

have received privately in my own house, children belonging to

non-religious families, who had consequently undergone no religious

influence. [9]

One of my little pupils was just over seven years old, when a friend

of his family, noticing his intelligence, and knowing that he had been

educated in "freedom," thought he would test him by describing to him

briefly animal evolution according to the principles of Lamarck and

Darwin. The child followed his explanation very attentively and then

asked: "Well, then, man comes from the monkey, and the monkey from

some other animal, and so on; but from whom did the first creature

come?" "The first," answered his friend, "was formed by chance." The

child laughed aloud, and, calling his mother, said excitedly: "Just

listen; what nonsense! Life was formed by chance! That is impossible."

"Then how was life formed?" "It is God," replied the child, with

conviction.

[Footnote 9: At present some very interesting experiments in religious

education are being carried out in the "Escola Montessori" at

Barcelona, under the direction of the Provincial Deputies of that

city.]

This same child was prepared, with his mother's consent, for Holy

Communion, together with his sister; a highly educated young priest of

much æsthetic knowledge undertook the task. I was curious to hear what

objections the child had raised; but I was not admitted to his

lessons. I was only present on one occasion, when the course of

instruction was almost at an end. The priest spoke of the reservation

of the wine and of the practical situations in which the celebrant may

find himself during the holy office. I thought such a dissertation

entirely unsuitable for children, and one which was likely to distract

their attention from the end in view; but I saw with amazement that

their faces were turned intently to the altar; they were evidently

unfamiliar with such minute explanations, but they were penetrated by

a sentiment which attracted them; the chalice with the divine blood

appealed to these souls ready to receive it, as it did to the innocent

Parsifal. When they made their first Communion, I was convinced that

their souls received the mysteries with the sweetest faith and with

absolute simplicity, as if all that is of God were comprehensible to

them, and only that which denies Him an absurdity. Their spiritual

conquest accompanied them in life.

A little cousin of these children, who was prepared to receive the

Communion a long time after them, and who had had no religious

training in her own home, said one day, when she was working

enthusiastically in class: "How beautiful the anatomy of a flower is!

I like arithmetic and geometry so much! But religion is the most

beautiful thing of all."

There was an older child in the school, whose parents, both father and

mother, were positively hostile to religion. This child, although she

showed great interest in the school exercises, was always restless.

Later, when some wonderful children's parties were given in the villa

where she lived, which were arranged with great skill and were

veritable works of art, she became still more restless and cynical,

almost as if she were suffering from some disillusionment. One day she

called an orphan child from Messina, who was one of our children who

had come from the school in the Via Giusti, and took her away into a

quiet corner, asking her to repeat the Lord's Prayer. The orphan

recited it, while the rich child gazed at her eagerly. Then, as if in

obedience to an inspiration, she went to the piano to play; but her

hands trembled; she threw herself on one side, with her elbow on the

keyboard and her head hanging, unable to conceal her agitation any

longer. Her soul was seeking to satisfy its yearning; nothing could

give her peace but the one thing those who loved her wished to

withhold from her. Her heart was still alive and eager: "Like as the

heart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O

God."

As yet the coarse scoria evolved from darkness, which makes it so

difficult for the adult to embrace the mysteries of the spirit like a

little child, had not formed around her. Later, such mysteries become

incomprehensible; as to Nicodemus, who replied to Christ: "How can a

man be born again? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?"

But this rapid survey will suffice to make us understand that the

little child has other needs, in addition to his intellectual wants,

and that long before his intelligence is developed and satisfied, his

pure and open spirit reflects the divine light. He is perhaps the

Parsifal for whom we are waiting, depressed and sick at heart, while

because of the impurity of our hands the dove can no longer descend in

the Holy Grail towards the chalice filled with the blood of Peace. [10]

[Footnote 10: The moral question is barely indicated and is not even

comprehensively indicated. Such a work, indeed, represents an

experimental contribution to the education of the intelligence. At

present an experimental study of the moral and religious education of

children has only just been initiated at Barcelona (Spain). A book on

this subject should form a sequel to this volume.

I cannot foresee whether I and my colleagues will be able to bring

such a heavy task to a successful conclusion.]