The Weakest Link in the Human Chain
“This shall be thy reward--that the ideal shall be real to thee.”
OLIVE SCHREINER: _Dreams_.
Proverbs innumerable and daily experience have familiarized every one
with the idea that the citizen is moulded and his or her essential
characteristics determined in childhood, and as a result of childhood’s
training. The most profoundly operative of all his qualities is his
potential sex attitude, because it is that which determines his
experience of sex and marriage, which colours his thoughts towards
women throughout his life, which inclines his mind nobly towards his
own racial actions or which leaves him weak and frivolous in his
attitude towards the greatest profundities of life.
Children, otherwise brought up with every care and forethought,
surrounded by all that love and money can give them, are too generally
left, without their mother’s guidance or their father’s wisdom, to
discover the great facts of life partly by instinct and partly from
the vulgar talk of servants or soiled children a little older than
themselves. Worse even than this takes place, because most generally in
this connection they not only do not hear the truth from their mother’s
lips, but they learn from her their most influential and earliest
lesson in lying.
The curious thing about the particularly pernicious form of lying which
deals with racial things in the presence of childhood is that we have
the habit of thinking it quite innocent. Indeed we have even acquired
the habit of thinking it one of the charming form of lies; hence when
we are in a reforming mood, seeking for the origins of the wrongs we
are trying to put right, we pass these “charming” lies by, thinking
them harmless.
Where did each one of us first learn to lie?
_Nearly every one who is now grown up got his (or her) first lesson in
lying at his mother’s knee._ To the little child, in his narrow but
ever widening world, the mother is the supreme ruler, the all-wise
provider of food, clothes, pleasures and pains. The mother (the child
instinctively feels) must be also the source of wisdom.
Question after question about himself and his surroundings springs
up in the baby mind. Mother is asked them all, and for every one
she has some sort of an answer. Then inevitably, at three or four,
or five years old comes the question:--“Mother, where did you find
me?”--“Mother, how was I born?”
Then comes the lie.
The child is told about the doctor bringing him in a bag--or a stork
flying in through the window--or the accidental finding under the
gooseberry bush.
All children delight in fairy tales, but instinctively they know very
well the difference between a fairy tale which is recounted to them as
a story in answer to their mood of “make-believe” and a fiction which
is putting them off when they are seeking the truth.
If the mother who feels herself too ignorant or too self-conscious to
answer the truth to the child’s questions takes him on her knee and
deliberately tells him in a “make-believe” mood a fairy tale, the child
will then not feel that the mother has lied. _He will feel, however,
that he must ask some one else for the truth._
But most mothers give the answer containing the fiction of the
gooseberry bush, or whatever it may be, in a manner indicating that
that is what the child must believe, and the child receives the
information as a serious answer to his serious question. It is then a
lie, and a pernicious lie.
Racial knowledge, instinct, whatever you like to call it, is subtler
and stronger in baby minds than we dulled grown-ups are inclined to
think. The youngest child has a half-consciousness that what its mother
said in answer to this question was not true.
Nurse, or auntie, a friend’s governess, or any one else who seems wise
and powerful, is asked the same question when mother is not there,
and the chances are that if mother had given the stork version auntie
gives the gooseberry bush or some other fiction which she particularly
favours.
The baby ponders intermittently, inconsequently, perhaps at long
intervals, perhaps after years, but ultimately it realizes that its
mother lied to it.
In this way infinite injury has been done to the whole human stock,
and more particularly women have suffered from the dishonesty and the
inherent incapacity of our society to be frank and truthful about
the most profound and the most terrible aspects of sex, namely, its
diseases. A wife or a mother has the right to be told the truth.
Women, and particularly mothers, have been outrageously wronged by the
deliberate lies and untruthful atmosphere about the greater problems
of sex in which the learned have enshrouded them: but mothers have
themselves given the first bent to the little sprouting twig of that
tree of knowledge, and they have bent it _away_ from the sunlight of
truth and clean and happy understanding.
The mother’s excuse is, or would be if she felt herself in any way to
blame (which, by the way, deplorably, she very seldom does) that these
terrible mysteries of origin are not suitable for the little innocent
child to ponder over. She thinks they would shock him. But here the
mother is profoundly mistaken.
_The age of innocence is the age when all knowledge is pure._ At three,
four, or five years old, everything is taken for granted--everything in
the universe is equally a surprise, and is at the same time accepted
without question as being in the natural course of events. If true
answers were given to the tiny child’s questions, they would seem quite
rational--not in the least more surprising than the fact that oak trees
grow from acorns, or that the cook gets a jam tart out of a hot oven.
All the world’s events seem magic at that age, and if no exceptional
mystery were made of the magic of his own advent, the child would
feel it as natural as all the rest, and having asked the question and
obtained satisfactory, simple unaccentuated answers, would let his
little mind run on to the thousand other questions he wants to ask. The
essential racial knowledge would slip naturally and sweetly into his
mind mingled with a myriad other new impressions.
There is no self-consciousness, no personal shamefacedness, about a
tiny child. It accepts the great truths of the universe in the grand
manner.
If the mother has never failed her child, has always given it what she
could of wisdom, she will retain his trust and his confidence. When he
gets a little older she can teach him to go to no one else for talk
about the intimacies of life, which the child is quick to realize are
not discussed openly amongst strangers.
Then, later on, when personal consciousness and shyness begin, there
need not be the acute constraint and tension of the shame-faced
elder speaking to a mind awakening to itself. Deep in the child’s
consciousness, deeper even than its conscious memory goes, the true big
facts are planted.
To tell a child of twelve or fourteen the truth is, for most parents,
an impossibly difficult matter. The reason for this is that it is then
too late for essentials; only details are then suitable or necessary.
Little children spend much of their early time in exploring themselves
and their immediate surroundings--all is mysterious, all at first
unknown. Their own feet and hands, their powers of locomotion and of
throwing some object to a distance, the curls of their own hair, the
pain they encounter in their bodies when explorations bring them in
contact with sharp angles: all are equally mysterious, together forming
a wonder-world. And babies are very young indeed when they explore with
all the rest of their bodies, the rudiments of those of their racial
organs with which they can acquaint themselves. _In my opinion, the
attitude of a man or woman through life is largely determined by the
attitude adopted by the mother towards the racial organs_ BEFORE _the
child was old enough consciously to remember any instruction that was
imparted_.
Advice is often given in these more enlightened days to instruct your
boy or girl in his racial power or duties when he or she is ten or
twelve years old. This to many seems very young, and they hesitate
and defer it till they are older and “can understand better.” In my
opinion, this is already eight or ten years too late.
_The child’s first instruction in its attitude towards its sex organs,
its first account of the generation of human beings, should be given
when it is two or three years old_; given with other instruction, of
which it is still too young to comprehend more than part, but which
it is nevertheless old enough to comprehend in part. Very simple
instruction given reverently at suitable opportunities at that early
age will impress itself upon the very _texture_ of the child’s mind,
before the time of actual memories, so that from the very first
possible beginnings its tendencies are in the direction of truth and
reverent understanding.
_A child so tiny will usually not remember one word of what was said
to it, but the effects on his outlook will be deep._ For at that early
age, children are meditatively absorbing and being impressed by the
psychological states and feelings of their instructors and companions,
and if, in these very earliest months, the mother or guardian makes the
mistake of treating ribaldly the tiny organs or of speaking lightly in
the child’s presence, or of directly lying to the child about these
facts, that child receives a mental warp and injury which nothing can
ever eradicate entirely, which may in later years through bitter and
befouling experiences be lived down as an old scar that has healed, but
which will have permanently injured it.
I hold this to be a profound truth, and one which it is urgent that
humanity should realize. I trust that my view will establish itself on
every hand. If that were my way, I could easily write a whole volume
on this theme, and coin a polysyllabic terminology in which to mould
and harden thought on the subject. But I prefer that a few simple words
should slip like vital seed into the hearts of mothers, and that they
may mould the race.
It is ignorance of this truth which has led to the dishonouring and
befouling of pure and beautiful youth, which is the original source of
the greater part of all the social troubles and the sex difficulties of
adolescence.
_The tiny child of two or three years old, just beginning to perceive
and piece together the psychological impressions stamped upon it by
its environment and the mind-states of those around it, is the weakest
link in the chain of our social consciousness._ Physically, the new
born babe for the first few days of its life is the weakest link in
the chain, the most liable physically to extinction, but spiritually,
socially the link most liable to warping, even destruction, is the
awakening mind, the still half-sleeping consciousness, of the child
between two and three years old.
The mother or guardian then who desires her son or daughter to face
the great facts of life beautifully and profoundly should begin from
the first to mould that attitude in the child. It may appear to the
unthinking like building castles in the sand even to hint at truths
which it cannot comprehend to a child who remembers nothing of the
words used in later years. This is not so. What the child absorbs is
less the actual words than the tone of voice, the mode of expression
that spiritually impresses itself upon its own little soul.
Then there comes a later stage for most civilized human beings,
usually after they are three years old, when there arises the
possibility of permanent consciousness through permanent and specific
memory of things seen, done or heard. Most grown-ups of the present
generation will have some vivid memory, dating back to when they
were between three and four years old, when they received a strong
mental impression that grown-ups were lying to them or that there
was something funny or silly in questions which they asked. Perhaps
they noticed that whilst Jack the Giant Killer was taken seriously,
questions about where pussy got her kittens were laughed at. Almost
each one of us who is to-day grown up then received some grievous
injury. This time is of great importance in the psychology not only
of the child, but of the whole adult race arising from the growing up
of each child, for one’s earliest memories are few but very vivid. As
things are to-day, generally between the ages of three and four or so,
in the months which are likely to yield a lifelong memory, the spirit
is wounded by the shock of a serious lie.
When as a mother or father you are with your children it is vital to
be most careful to answer truly, and if possible beautifully, the
questions which arise. No one can foresee which question and answer may
make that terrible impression which lasts for a lifetime.
When your little son or daughter is about the age of three or four
or five, the day will come when you are asked questions about the
most fundamental facts in human life, and then the answers to these
questions contain the probability of a lifelong memory. Answer with the
_truth_.
Many parents are anxious to tell their children the great truths in
a wise and beautiful manner. But few feel that they know how to do
it, for it is a most difficult thing to know how to answer searching
questions about profound subjects, and particularly about those which
the community wrongly considers shameful. Each mother knows, or should
know, the temperament and needs of her child, so that the adaptation
of the advice I give should be varied to suit the individual child. In
essence, however, children’s demands at an early age are remarkably
similar, and the questions of children on birth and sex differ in form,
though seldom in substance.
The following conversation between a mother and her little son
indicates what seems to me the best way first to tell a child who has
reached the age when he may have lasting memory of the facts that he is
blindly seeking in his baby questions. It will not suffice to learn the
answers off by heart; the baby will then soon confound his elders, but
the substance of the conversation should prove useful.
The very first time the query comes: “Mother where did you get me?” the
mother must not divert the child’s interest, or hesitate, but should be
ready at once to answer:--
“God and Daddy and I together made you, because we wanted you.[11]”
[11] At the request of many readers this conversation was published
in the _Sunday Chronicle_.
“Did God help? Couldn’t He do it all Himself?”
“You know when you and I are playing with bricks together, you like
Mummy to help, but not to do it all. God thought Daddy and Mummy
would like Him to help, but not to do everything, because Daddy
and Mummy enjoyed making you much more than you enjoy playing with
bricks.”
That may suffice for the time, because little children are very readily
satisfied with one or two facts about any one subject, and the talk
could easily be diverted. The little mind may brood over what was told,
and some time later--perhaps a few days, perhaps even a few months or
more--this question will come up again, possibly in a different form:--
“Mummy, when was I born?”
The mother should give the day and say:--
“You know your birthday comes every year on the 18th of April. That
birthday is what reminds us of the day you were born, and each
birthday you are a whole year older.”
“I’m five now.”
“Yes, so you were born five years ago on your birthday.”
“Where was I before I was born?”
“Don’t you remember I told you that God and Daddy and I made you?”
“Yes.... Did you make me on my birthday?”
“Not all in one day; you took much longer to make than that.”
“How long did I take to make?”
“A long, long time. Little children are so precious they cannot be
made in a hurry.”
“How long did I take?”
“Nearly a year--nine whole months.”
“Did baby take as long?”
“Yes, just the same time. Baby is just as precious as you are.”
“I’m bigger.”
“Now you are, but you were baby’s size when you were baby’s age.
You are bigger because you have grown since your first birthday.”
Again the subject may perhaps drop, or it may be carried directly
forward.
“What is being born?”
“Being born is being shown to the world and seeing the world for
the first time. At the end of nine months after God and Daddy and
Mummy started to make you, you were ready to open your eyes and
breathe and cry, and be a real live baby, and that day they showed
you to somebody and you saw the world. That was being born.”
“Where was I before you finished making me?”
“Mummy kept you hidden away so that nobody at all should see you.”
“_Where_ was I hidden?”
“You were hidden in a most wonderful place, in the place where only
quite little babies can be while God and their mummies are making
them.”
“Show me; I want to go back there.”
“You can never go back; it is only while you are being made you can
be there. After your first birthday, you can never go back.”
“Where was I?”
“Well, you know, little babies that are being made are very, very
delicate, and they have to be kept very warm and comfortable, and
nobody must see them, and they must be close, close up to their
mummies.”
The child may interject, “And their daddies too?”
“Yes, if they have got loving daddies, the daddy keeps close to the
mummy; but while babies are being made it is God and mummy that
have most of the work to do. That is why you must always love your
mummies and obey them.”
The child may be temporarily satisfied, or may continue at once:--
“But where _was_ it that I was while you were making me?”
“What is the warmest, softest, safest place you can think of?
Mummy’s heart: that is all warm with love. The place Mummy hid you
while God and she were making you was right underneath her heart.”
“Her real heart--the heart that beats like a clock ticking?”
“Yes, her real heart, just here.”
The mother should lay the child’s hand on her heart and let him feel it
beating.
“And just inside, right underneath here, Mummy kept you while God
was helping her to make you.”
The child who has been brought up in a home of love and tenderness and
beauty will find this a thrilling and beautiful thought, like a little
boy whom I know personally, and to whom this fact was told in this way.
Solemnly, and without a word, he went away from his mother into the
middle of the room and stood deep in thought for several minutes. Then
he turned, looked round, and rushed across the room, threw himself into
his mother’s lap, his arms round her neck and cried: “Oh, Mummy, Mummy,
then I was right inside you.”
For days afterwards he was filled with a rapturous joy, and at times
used to leave his play and come to his mother and put his arms round
her neck, saying: “Oh, Mummy, that is why I love you so.”
Whatever form the child’s feeling may take, the opportunity should not
be allowed to pass without a little addition to the conversation, and
the mother should say:--
“And you see that is why you must never talk to any one but Daddy
and Mummy, or God through your prayers, about such things. As God
and Daddy and Mummy, and no one else made your little body, so
every thing you want to know about it, all the questions you want
to ask, you should ask of them and no one else. You see, you are
different from any other child in the world, and as Daddy and
Mummy helped to make you, only they know your works. So whatever it
is you want to know, or whatever it is that goes wrong, it is Mummy
and Daddy who can tell you about it.”
Once may be sufficient for a child to be told the greater truths
it desires to know, but it is seldom that the child will leave so
wonderful a subject entirely alone after first learning of it, and many
portions of the beautiful facts will have to be repeated in a variety
of forms, or in just the same words, as are repeated again and again
the beloved fairy tales. The child, however, will be quick to know
the difference between this story and fairy tales, for children have
an instinct for truth at a much earlier age than grown-ups generally
remember.
A further series of questions will probably arise when the child is
about twelve.
The essential difficulties of these later questions, and the shamefaced
self-consciousness so usual between parent and child will never arise
if from the first the deep truths have been known to the child.
The child so instructed is not supplied with all necessary facts,
and instruction of a more specific and exact nature will have to
be repeated at further intervals throughout its life, but on this
foundation, further knowledge can be built without having to wipe out
anything already implanted, without having to contradict earlier
instruction, or to acknowledge the gravest error of having lied. Life
teaches much to a quick child trained to observation, particularly
in the country, where all children should spend much of their time.
If the little one has been told what has been given in the previous
pages it will have all the essential truths on to which it will fit in
for itself the other data which daily life will bring it; thus it may
garner a harvest of facts one by one.
Concerning the later instruction which will be necessary, the
information can be given in many ways. Some advocate school instruction
of children of twelve or more in the physiology of all the members of
the body, so that the racial powers are treated in their proper place
in conjunction with the digestive organs, brain, lungs, etc. Some
parents prefer to give the instruction themselves, for none but they
can know so well the individual needs of the child.
Much has already been written and is available in the voluminous
literature about the presentation of the facts to be imparted at the
various later ages, and almost every book advises comparisons with
flowers. For the later ages of ten years and after, this is probably
the best introduction for specific details, but for the first and
earliest instruction of the baby mind, such direct simple answers as I
have indicated are, I am sure, the best.
Children whose parents have treated them as I advise in this chapter
are _essentially safe_ whatever form later instruction may take. They
will then have the vitality to survive lies, although ever to lie to
them will be putting a cruel and useless strain on their recuperative
powers. If the little child is started upon its life with a beautiful
and true conception of its relation to its mother, and of man’s
relation to woman, it will be unlikely indeed that it will grow up a
hooligan who flouts his parents or a loose and lascivious destroyer of
women.