idea than any previous ones. The intellectual tone of the society he
frequented, the sympathy of his transcendental friends, the standing of
his pupils, the expectation of exacting lookers on, encouraged the
philosopher to give free rein to his theory. The principle of vicarious
punishment--the innocent bearing pain for the guilty--the master for the
pupil--was adopted as likely to enlist the sentiment of honor and noble
shame in the cause of good behavior. A portion of the time was set apart
for direct address by way of question and answer, to the higher
faculties of the scholars. Mr. Alcott gave a series of "Conversations on
the Gospels," with most interesting and surprising results. These too
were reported, and are very suggestive and astonishing reading.
But even in Boston, the teacher's faith in the soul found an
unresponsive public. The "Conversations on the Gospels" were furiously
attacked in the newspapers. The conservative spirit was aroused; the
sectarian feeling was shocked; and the school, which began with thirty
pupils, and rose to forty, fell away to ten; the receipts, which in the
first year were $1,794, in the fourth (1837), were but $549, and at last
only $343. In April, 1839, the furniture, library and apparatus of the
school were sold to pay debts. The culture, refinement, liberality,
philosophic aspiration of Boston, led by such men as James Freeman
Clarke, Frederick H. Hedge, Chandler Robbins, George Russell, and by
such women as Margaret Fuller, Miss Peabody, Miss Martineau, and the
mothers of boys who have since done credit to their names, were not
sufficient to protect the institution from failure, or the teacher from
insult and obloquy. Prejudice, and prejudice alone, defeated the scheme.
But the idea and the apostle survived. Miss Harriet Martineau, who knew
Mr. Alcott well in 1837, spoke of him on her return home to James
Pierrepont Greaves, an ardent English disciple of Pestalozzi. Mr.
Greaves gave the name "Alcott House," to a school near London, which he
had founded on the Pestalozzian method; he even meditated a visit to
America, for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the New
England sage, and would have done so but for illness, which terminated
in death. A long letter from him to Mr. Alcott, was printed in the
"Dial" of April, 1843, a portion whereof it is interesting to read,
because it throws light on the cardinal ideas of this school of
thinkers. Mr. Alcott's reply to the letter is not before us, but it was
probably, in the main, sympathetic. The letter is dated London, 16th
December, 1837:
DEAR SIR,--Believing the Spirit has so far established its nature
in you, as to make you willing to co-operate with itself in Love
operations, I am induced, without apology, to address you as a
friend and companion in the hidden path of Love's most powerful
revelations. "The Record of a School" having fallen into my hands,
through Miss Harriet Martineau, I have perused it with deep
interest; and the object of my present address to you (occasioned
by this work) is to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with one,
in our Sister Land, who is so divinely and universally developed.
Permit me, therefore, dear sir, in simple affection, to put a few
questions to you, which, if answered, will give me possession of
that information respecting you and your work, which I think will
be useful to present and to future generations of men. Also a
mutual service may be rendered to ourselves, by assisting to evolve
our own being more completely, thereby making us more efficient
instruments for Love's use, in carrying forward the work which it
has begun within us. The Unity himself must have his divine purpose
to accomplish in and by us, or he would not have prepared us as far
as he has. I am, therefore, willing to withhold nothing, but to
receive and transmit all he is pleased to make me _be_, and thus,
at length, to become an harmonious being. This he can readily work
in the accomplishment of his primitive purposes. Should you think
that a personal intercourse of a few weeks would facilitate the
universal work, I would willingly undertake the voyage to America
for that purpose. There is so decided and general a similarity in
the sentiments and natures addressed in the account of your
teaching, that a contact of spirits so alike developed would, no
doubt, prove productive of still further development. Your school
appears to work deeper than any we have in England, and its inner
essential character interests me. If an American bookseller will
send over any of your books to his correspondents here, I shall be
happy to receive and pay for them.
In the year 1817 some strong interior visitations came over me,
which withdrew me from the world in a considerable degree, and I
was enabled to yield myself up to Love's own manner of acting,
regardless of all consequences. Soon after this time, I met with an
account of the Spirit's work in and by the late venerable
Pestalozzi, which so interested me that I proceeded at once to
visit him in Switzerland, and remained with him in holy fellowship
four years. After that I was working with considerable success
amongst the various students in that country, when the prejudices
of the self-made wise and powerful men became jealous of my
influence, and I was advised to return to England, which I did; and
have been working in various ways of usefulness ever since, from
the deep centre to the circumference; and am now engaged in writing
my conscientious experiences as well as I can represent them in
words, and in teaching all such as come within my sphere of action.
Receptive beings, however, have as yet been but limited, and those
who permanently _retain_, have been still less; yet, at present,
there appears a greater degree of awakening to the central
love-sensibility than before. I see many more symptoms of the
harvest-time approaching in this country. There is, at present, no
obvious appearance of the Love-seed beginning to germinate.
* * * * *
The child has two orders of faculties which are to be educated,
essential and semi-essential; or in other words, roots and
branches.
Radical faculties belong to the interior world, and the branchial
to the exterior.
To _produce_ a central effect on the child, the radical faculties
must be first developed; to _represent_ this effect, the branchial
faculties must be developed.
The radical faculties belong entirely to Love; the branchial to
knowledge and industry.
It is imperative upon us to follow the determination of the radical
faculties, and to modify the branchial always in obedience to the
radical.
It is the child, or the Love-Spirit in the child, that we must
obey, and not suffer the Parents or any one else to divert us from
it.
Good is not to be determined by man's wishes, but Good must
originate and determine the wish.
The Preceptor must watch attentively for every new exhibition of
the child's radical faculties, and obey them as divine laws.
We must in every movement consider that it is the Infinite
perfecting the finite.
All that is unnecessary in the external must be kept from the
child.
The Preceptor's duty is, as far as possible, to remove every
hindrance out of the child's way.
The closer he keeps the child to the Spirit, the less it will want
of us, or anyone else.
The child has an inward, sacred, and unchangeable nature; which
nature is the Temple of Love. This nature only demands what it will
give, if properly attended to, viz.: Unfettered Liberty.
The Love Germs can alone germinate with Love. Light and Life are
but conditions of Love. Divine capacities are made by love alone.
Love education is primarily a passive one; and, secondarily, an
active one. To educate the radical faculties is altogether a new
idea with Teachers at present.
The parental end must be made much more prominent than it has been.
The conceptive powers want much more purification than the
perceptive; and it is only as we purify the conceptive that we
shall get the perceptive clear.
It is the essential conceptive powers that tinge all the
consequences of the exterior conceptive powers.
We have double conceptions, and double perceptions; we are
throughout double beings; and claim the universal morality, as well
as the personal.
We must now educate the universal moral faculties, as before we
have only educated the personal moral faculties.
It is in the universal moral faculties that the laws reside; until
these laws are developed, we remain lawless beings.
The personal moral faculties cannot stand without the aid of the
universal moral faculties, any more than the branches can grow
without the roots.
Education, to be decidedly religious, should reach man's universal
faculties, those faculties which contain the laws that connect man
with his maker.
These reflections seem to me to be worthy of consideration. Should
any of them strike you as worth while to make an observation upon,
I shall be happy to hear it. Suggestions are always valuable, as
they offer to the mind the liberty of free activity. The work we
are engaged in is too extensive and important, to lose any
opportunity of gaining information.
The earlier I receive your reply, the better.
I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
J. P. GREAVES.
In 1842, Mr. Alcott visited England with the aim to confer with the
philanthropists and educators there, to exchange views, collect
information, and gather hints on the subject of literary and social
methods. Mr. Greaves was dead; but the living friends of the "First
Philosophy" received him with hearty respect and joy, introduced him to
men of literary and philanthropic eminence, and made his arrival the
occasion of meetings for conversation on the religious, social and
ethical questions of the day. The meetings were held mostly at an
institution managed on his own methods and called by his own name, the
school of Mr. Wright at Alcott House, Ham, Surrey. Strange people were
some of those he met, Communists, Alists (deriving their name from
Alah--the Hebrew name for God), Syncretic Associationists,
Pestalozzians, friends and advocates of self-supporting institutions,
experimental Normal Schools, Hydropathic and Philosophical Associations,
Health Unions, Philansteries, Utopias of every description, new social
arrangements between the sexes, new devices for making marriage what it
should be.
The London _Morning Chronicle_, of July 5th, contained the following
advertisement:
"Public Invitation.--An open meeting of the friends to human
progress will be held to-morrow, July 6th, at Mr. Wright's, Alcott
House School, Ham Common, near Richmond, Surrey, for the purpose of
considering and adopting means for the promotion of the great end,
when all who are interested in human destiny are earnestly urged to
attend. The chair taken at three o'clock, and again at seven, by A.
Bronson Alcott, Esq., now on a visit from America. Omnibuses travel
to and fro, and the Richmond steamboat reaches at a convenient
hour."
The call brought together some sixteen or twenty persons, from various
distances; one a hundred miles; another a hundred and fifty. "We did not
find it easy to propose a question sufficiently comprehensive to unfold
the whole of the fact with which our bosoms labored," writes a private
correspondent of the "Dial."
"We aimed at nothing less than to speak of the instauration of
spirit, and its incarnation in a beautiful form. When a word failed
in extent of meaning, we loaded the word with new meaning. The word
did not confine our experience, but from our own being we gave
significance to the word. Into one body we infused many lives, and
it shone as the image of divine or angelic, or human thought. For a
word is a Proteus, that means to a man what the man is."
The "Dial" of October, 1842, prints an abstract of the proceedings,
which are interesting, as illustrations of the phases that the Spiritual
Philosophy assumed, but would occupy more space here than their
significance warrants. Three papers were presented, on Formation,
Transition, Reformation. The views, it is needless to say, were of the
extreme school. The essayist on the first theme advanced the doctrine
that evil commenced in birth; that the unpardonable sin was an unholy
birth; that birth "must be surrendered to the spirit." The second
essayist maintained that property was held on the tenure of might and
immemorial custom; that "pure love, which is ever communicative, never
yet conceded to any being the right of appropriation." "We ignore human
governments, creeds and institutions; we deny the right of any man to
dictate laws for our regulation, or duties for our performance; and
declare our allegiance only to Universal Love, the all-embracing
Justice."
The reader of the paper on Reformation pursued the same train of
thought; he demanded amendment of monetary arrangements, the penal code,
education, the church, the law of primogeniture, and divorce; challenged
reliance on commercial prosperity and popular representation; denied the
right of man to inflict pain on man; asserted that the question of
generation preceded that of education; that the reign of love was
supreme over that of opinion; insisted on "the restoration of all things
to their primitive Owner, and hence the abrogation of property--either
individual or collective;" and on "the divine sanction, instead of the
civil and ecclesiastical authority, for marriage." It was his idea, that
"aspirations are the pledge of their own fulfilment,"--that "beneath the
actual which a man is, there is always covered a possible to tempt him
forward"--that "beneath sense lie reason and understanding; beneath them
both, humility; and beneath all, God"--that "to be God-like we must pass
through the grades of progress." "Even now the God-life is enfolded in
us; even now the streams of eternity course freely in our central heart;
if impelled by the spirit to intermingle with the arrangements of
polities of the world, in order to improve them, we shall discover the
high point from which we begin, by the God-thought in our interference;
our act must be divine; we seem to do, God does; God empowers
legislators, and ennobles them for their fidelity; let them, however,
be apostles, not apostles' representatives; men of God, not men of men;
personal elevation is our credentials; personal reform is that which is
practicable, and without it our efforts on behalf of others are dreams
only."
No remarks from Mr. Alcott are recorded. That the meetings satisfied and
cheered him may be inferred from the circumstance that, immediately
after his return from England, he undertook to inaugurate the ideal
social state at Fruitlands--with what success we know.
In 1859, Mr. Alcott had another and larger opportunity to exercise his
wisdom as an educator of youth. He was chosen superintendent of the
schools of Concord; a position that called out the finest qualities of
his mind, and put to immediate use the results of his long experience,
but relieved him from the business arrangements for which he had never
displayed an aptitude. The three brief but remarkable reports that he
made on the condition and needs of the schools, increase one's respect
for the workings of the spiritual philosophy in this field of effort. If
the suggestions offered in those reports were to any considerable extent
adopted, if the noble and gracious spirit of them was felt, the schools
of Concord should be model schools of their class.
"The school is the primary interest of the community. Every parent
naturally desires a better education for his children than he
received himself, and spends liberally of his substance for this
pleasure; wisely hoping to make up his deficiencies in that way,
and to complement himself in their better attainments; esteeming
these the richest estate he can leave, and the fairest ornaments of
his family name."
"Especially have I wished to introduce the young to the study of
their minds, the love of thinking; often giving examples of lessons
in analysis and classification of their faculties. I think I may
say that these exercises have given much pleasure, and have been
found profitable alike to the teacher and the children. In most
instances, I have closed my visits by reading some interesting
story or parable. These have never failed of gaining attention, and
in most cases, prompt responses. I consider these readings and
colloquies as among the most profitable and instructive of the
superintendent's labors."
Pilgrim's Progress, Krummacher's Parables, AEsop's Fables, Faery Queen,
the stories of Plutarch and Shakspeare, were his favorites.
"The graceful exercise of singing has been introduced into some of
the schools. It should prevail in all of them. It softens the
manners, cultivates the voice, and purifies the taste of the
children. It promotes harmony and good feelings. The old masters
thought much of it as a discipline. 'Let us sing' has the welcome
sound of 'Let us play,'--and is perhaps the child's prettiest
translation of 'Let us pray,'--admitting him soonest to the
intimacy he seeks."
"Conversations on words, paraphrases and translations of sentences,
are the natural methods of opening the study of language. A child
should never be suffered to lose sight of the prime fact that he is
studying the realities of nature and of the mind through the
picture books of language. Any teaching falling short of this is
hollow and a wrong done to the mind."
"For composition, let a boy keep his diary, write his letters, try
his hand at defining from a dictionary and paraphrasing, and he
will find ways of expressing himself simply as boys and men did
before grammars were invented."
"Teaching is a personal influence for the most part, and operating
as a spirit unsuspected at the moment. I have wished to divine the
secret source of success attained by any, and do justice to this;
it seemed most becoming to regard any blemishes as of secondary
account in the light of the acknowledged deserts. We require of
each what she has to give, no more. Does the teacher awaken
thought, strengthen the mind, kindle the affections, call the
conscience, the common sense into lively and controlling activity,
so promoting the love of study, the practice of the virtues; habits
that shall accompany the children outwards into life? The memory is
thus best cared for, the end of study answered; the debt of teacher
to parents, of parents to teacher discharged, and so the State's
bounty best bestowed."
"A little gymnasticon, a system of gestures for the body might be
organized skilfully and become part of the daily exercises in our
schools. Graceful steps, pretty musical airs, in accompaniment of
songs--suiting the sentiment to the motions, the emotions, ideas of
the child--would be conducive to health of body and mind alike. We
shall adopt dancing presently as a natural training for the manners
and morals of the young."
"Conversation is the mind's mouth-piece, its best spokesman; the
leader elect and prompter in teaching; practised daily, it should
be added to the list of school studies; an art in itself, let it be
used as such, and ranked as an accomplishment second to none that
nature or culture can give. Certainly the best we can do is to
teach ourselves and children how to talk. Let conversation displace
much that passes current under the name of recitation; mostly sound
and parrotry, a repeating by rote not by heart, unmeaning sounds
from the memory and no more. 'Take my mind a moment,' says the
teacher, 'and see how things look through that prism,' and the
pupil sees prospects never seen before or surmised by him in that
lively perspective. So taught the masters; Plato, Plutarch,
Pythagoras, Pestalozzi; so Christianity was first published from
lovely lips; so every one teaches deserving the name of teacher or
interpreter. Illustration always and apt; life calling forth life;
the giving of life and a partaking. Nothing should be interposed
between the mind and its subject matter--cold sense is impertinent;
learning is insufficient--only life alone; life like a torch
lighting the head at the heart."
"Next to thinking for themselves, the best service any teacher can
render his scholars is to show them how to use books. The wise
teacher is the key for opening the mind to the books he places
before it."
"Stories are the idyls of childhood. They cast about it the romance
it loves and lives in, rendering the commonest circumstances and
things inviting and beautiful. Parables, poems, histories,
anecdotes, are prime aids in teaching; the readiest means of
influence and inspiration; the liveliest substitutes for flagging
spirits, fatigued wits."
"A little atlas of the body mythologically shown from the artist's
points of view, the plates displaying the person to the eye, in a
set of draped figures, is a book much wanted for first lines in
drawing. A child's piety is seen in its regards for its body and
the concern it shows in its carriage and keeping. Of all forms the
human form is most marvellous; and the modest reverence for its
shadings intimates the proper mode of studying it rightly and
religiously as a pantheon of powers. The prime training best opens
here as an idealism, the soul fashioning her image in the form she
animates, and so scrutinizing piously without plucking the
forbidden fruits."
"There is a want of suitable aids to the studies of these
mysteries. The best books I know are poor enough. In the want of a
better, we name for the study of matter in its connection with the
mind, including the proper considerations regarding health and
temperance, Graham's 'Laws of Life,' a rather dull but earnest
book; and for smaller classes and beginners Dr. Alcott's 'House I
Live In.' Miss Catherine Beecher's book for studies in Physiology
and Calisthenics, is a practical treatise, and should be in all
schools. Sir John Sinclair's 'Code of Health' contains a
republication of the Wisdom of the Ancients, on these subjects, and
is a book for all persons and times."
"Perhaps we are correcting the old affection for flogging at some
risk of spoiling the boys of this generation. Girls have always
known how to cover with shame any insult of that sort, but the
power of persuasion comes slow as a promptitude to supersede its
necessity. Who deals with a child, deals with a piece of divinity
obeying laws as innate as those he transgresses; and which he must
treat tenderly, lest he put spiritual interests in jeopardy.
Punishment must be just, else it cannot be accepted as good, and
least of all by the wicked and weak."
"The accomplished teacher combines in himself the art of teaching
and of ruling; power over the intellect and the will, inspiration
and persuasiveness. And this implies a double consciousness in its
possessor that carries forward the teaching and ruling together;
noting what transpires in motive as in act; the gift that in seeing
controls. It is the sway of presence and of mien; a conversion of
the will to his wishes, without which other gifts are of little
avail."
"Be sure the liveliest dispensations, the holiest, are his (the
unruly boy's)--his as cordially as ours, and sought for as kindly.
We must meet him where he is. Best to follow his bent if bent
beautifully; else bending him gently, not fractiously, lest we snap
or stiffen a stubbornness too stiff already. Gentleness now; the
fair eye, the conquering glances straight and sure; the strong
hand, if you must, till he fall penitent at the feet of Persuasion;
the stroke of grace before the smiting of the birch; for only so is
the conquest complete, and the victory the Lord's. If she is good
enough she may strike strong and frequent, till thanks come for it;
but who is she, much less he, that dares do it more than once, nor
repents in sorrow and shame for the strokes given? Only 'the
shining ones' may do it for good."