with the Bible and the conceptions of religion. Even for a man of really
strong and independent intellect it may be many years before the
precociously dulled feelings become fresh again, before the fetters of
routine fall off, and he is enabled at last to approach the Bible with
fresh receptivity and to realize, for the first time in his life, the
treasures of art and beauty and divine wisdom it contains. But for most
that moment never comes round. For the majority the religious education
of the school as effectually seals the Bible for life as the classical
education of the college seals the great authors of Greece and Rome for
life; no man opens his school books again when he has once left school.
Those who read Greek and Latin for love have not usually come out of
universities, and there is surely a certain significance in the fact
that the children of one's secularist friends are so often found to
become devout church-goers, while, according to the frequent
observation, devout parents often have most irreligious offspring, just
as the bad boys at school and college are frequently sons of the clergy.
At puberty and during adolescence everything begins to be changed. The
change, it is important to remember, is a natural change, and tends to
come about spontaneously; "where no set forms have been urged, the
religious emotion," as Lancaster puts it, "comes forth as naturally as
the sun rises."[172] That period, really and psychologically, marks a "new
birth." Emotions which are of fundamental importance, not only for the
individual's personal life but for his social and even cosmic
relationships, are for the first time born. Not only is the child's body
remoulded in the form of a man or a woman, but the child-soul becomes a
man-soul or a woman-soul, and nothing can possibly be as it has been
before. The daringly sceptical logician has gone, and so has the
imaginative dreamer for whom the world was the automatic magnifying
mirror of his own childish form and environment. It has been revealed to
him that there are independent personal and impersonal forces outside
himself, forces with which he may come into a conscious and
fascinatingly exciting relationship. It is a revelation of supreme
importance, and with it comes not only the complexly emotional and
intellectual realization of personality, but the aptitude to enter into
and assimilate the traditions of the race.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this is the moment, and the
earliest moment, when it becomes desirable to initiate the boy or girl
into the mysteries of religion. That it is the best moment is indicated
by the well-recognized fact that the immediately post-pubertal period of
adolescence is the period during which, even spontaneously, the most
marked religious phenomena tend to occur.[173] Stanley Hall seems to think
that twelve is the age at which the cultivation of the religious
consciousness may begin; "the age, signalized by the ancient Greeks as
that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music should
begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, at which boys are
confirmed in the modern Greek, Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal
Churches, and at which the Child Jesus entered the Temple, is as early
as any child ought consciously to go about his Heavenly Father's
business."[174] But I doubt whether we can fix the age definitely by
years, nor is it indeed quite accurate to assert that so early an age as
twelve is generally accepted as the age of initiation; the Anglican
Church, for example, usually confirms at the age of fifteen. It is not
age with which we ought to be concerned, but a biological epoch of
psychic evolution. It is unwise to insist on any particular age, because
development takes place within a considerably wide limit of years.
I have spoken of the introduction to religion at puberty as the
initiation into a mystery. The phrase was deliberately chosen, for it
seems to me to be not a metaphor, but the expression of a truth which
has always been understood whenever religion has been a reality and not
a mere convention. Among savages in nearly all parts of the world the
boy or girl at puberty is initiated into the mystery of manhood or of
womanhood, into the duties and the privileges of the adult members of
the tribe. The youth is taken into a solitary place, for a month or
more, he is made to suffer pain and hardship, to learn self-restraint,
he is taught the lore of the tribe as well as the elementary rules of
morality and justice; he is shown the secret things of the tribe and
their meaning and significance, which no stranger may know. He is, in
short, enabled to find his soul, and he emerges from this discipline a
trained and responsible member of his tribe. The girl receives a
corresponding training, suited to her sex, also in solitude, at the
hands of the older women. A clear and full description of a typical
savage initiation into manhood at puberty is presented by Dr. Haddon in
the fifth volume of the _Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological
Expedition to Torres Straits_, and Dr. Haddon makes the comment: "It is
not easy to conceive of more effectual means for a rapid training."
The ideas of remote savages concerning the proper manner of initiating
youth in the religious and other mysteries of life may seem of little
personal assistance to superiorly civilized people like ourselves. But
let us turn, therefore, to the Greeks. They also had preserved the idea
and the practice of initiation into sacred mysteries, though in a
somewhat modified form because religion had ceased to be so intimately
blended with all the activities of life. The Eleusinian and other
mysteries were initiations into sacred knowledge and insight which, as
is now recognized, involved no revelation of obscure secrets, but were
mysteries in the sense that all intimate experiences of the soul, the
experiences of love quite as much as those of religion, are mysteries,
not to be lightly or publicly spoken of. In that feeling the Greek was
at one with the Papuan, and it is interesting to observe that the
procedure of initiation into the Greek mysteries, as described by Theon
of Smyrna and other writers, followed the same course as the pubertal
initiations of savages; there was the same preliminary purification by
water, the same element of doctrinal teaching, the same ceremonial and
symbolic rubbing with sand or charcoal or clay, the same conclusion in a
joyous feast, even the same custom of wearing wreaths.
In how far the Christian sacraments were consciously moulded after the
model of the Greek mysteries is still a disputed point;[175] but the first
Christians were seeking the same spiritual initiation, and they
necessarily adopted, consciously or unconsciously, methods of procedure
which, in essentials, were fundamentally the same as those they were
already familiar with. The early Christian Church adopted the rite of
Baptism not merely as a symbol of initiation, but as an actual component
part of a process of initiation; the purifying ceremony was preceded by
long preparation, and when at last completed the baptized were sometimes
crowned with garlands. When at a later period in the history of the
Church the physical part of the initiation was divorced from the
spiritual part, and baptism was performed in infancy and confirmation at
puberty, a fatal mistake was made, and each part of the rite largely
lost its real significance.
But it still remains true that Christianity embodied in its practical
system the ancient custom of initiating the young at puberty, and that
the custom exists in an attenuated form in all the more ancient
Christian Churches. The rite of Confirmation has, however, been
devitalized, and its immense significance has been almost wholly lost.
Instead of being regarded as a real initiation into the privileges and
the responsibilities of a religious communion, of an active fellowship
for the realization of a divine life on earth, it has become a mere
mechanical corollary of the precedent rite of baptism, a formal
condition of participation in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The
splendid and many-sided discipline by which the child of the savage was
initiated into the secrets of his own emotional nature and the sacred
tradition of his people has been degraded into the learning of a
catechism and a few hours' perfunctory instruction in the schoolroom or
in the parlour of the curate's lodgings. The vital kernel of the rite is
decayed and only the dead shell is left, while some of the Christian
Churches have lost even the shell.
It is extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England
will reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction
to the young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion
which is taking place in all civilized countries.[176] The support which
the Secular Education League has found in the most various quarters is
without doubt a fact of impressive significance.[177] It is well known
also that the working classes--the people chiefly concerned in the
matter--are distinctly opposed to religious teaching in State schools.
There can be little doubt that before many years have passed, in England
as elsewhere, the Churches will have to face the question of the best
methods of themselves undertaking that task of religious training which
they have sought to foist upon the State. If they are to fulfil this
duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the guidance of
biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the teaching
of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely formal rite
of confirmation into a true initiation of the new-born soul at puberty
into the deepest secrets of life and the highest mysteries of religion.
It must, of course, be remembered that, so far as England is concerned,
we live in an empire in which there are 337 millions of people who are
not even nominally Christians,[178] and that even among the comparatively
small proportion (about 14 per cent) who call themselves "Christians," a
very large proportion are practically Secularists, and a considerable
number avowedly so. If, however, we assume the Secularist's position,
the considerations here brought forward still retain their validity. In
the first place, the undoubtedly frequent hostility of the Freethinker
to Christianity is not so much directed against vital religion as
against a dead Church. The Freethinker is prepared to respect the
Christian who by free choice and the exercise of thought has attained
the position of a Christian, but he resents the so-called Christian who
is merely in the Church because he finds himself there, without any
effort of his will or his intelligence. The convinced secularist feels
respect for the sincere Christian, even though it may only be in the
sense that the real saint feels tenderness for the hopeless sinner. And
in the second place, as I have sought to point out, the facts we are
here concerned with are far too fundamental to concern the Christian
alone. They equally concern the secularist, who also is called upon to
satisfy the spiritual hunger of the adolescent youth, to furnish him
with a discipline for his entry into life, and a satisfying vision of
the universe. And if secularists have not always grasped this necessity,
we may perhaps find therein one main reason why secularism has not met
with so enormous and enthusiastic a reception as the languor and
formalism of the churches seemed to render possible.
If the view here set forth is sound,--a view more and more widely held
by educationists and by psychologists trained in biology,--the first
twelve years must be left untouched by all conceptions of life and the
world which transcend immediate experience, for the child whose
spiritual virginity has been prematurely tainted will never be able to
awake afresh to the full significance of those conceptions when the age
of religion at last arrives. But are we, it may be asked, to leave the
child's restless, inquisitive, imaginative brain without any food during
all those early years? By no means. Even admitting that, as it has been
said, at the early stage religious training is the supreme art of
standing out of Nature's way, it is still not hard to find what, in this
matter, the way of Nature is. The life of the individual recapitulates
the life of the race, and there can be no better imaginative food for
the child than that which was found good in the childhood of the race.
The child who is deprived of fairy tales invents them for himself,--for
he must have them for the needs of his psychic growth just as there is
reason to believe he must have sugar for his metabolic growth,--but he
usually invents them badly.[179] The savage sees the world almost exactly
as the civilized child sees it, as the magnified image of himself and
his own environment; but he sees it with an added poetic charm, a
delightful and accomplished inventiveness which the child is incapable
of. The myths and legends of primitive peoples--for instance, those of
the British Columbian Indians, so carefully reproduced by Boas in German
and Hill Tout in English--are one in their precision and their
extravagance with the stories of children, but with a finer
inventiveness. It was, I believe, many years ago pointed out by Ziller
that fairy-tales ought to play a very important part in the education of
young children, and since then B. Hartmann, Stanley Hall and many others
of the most conspicuous educational authorities have emphasized the same
point. Fairy tales are but the final and transformed versions of
primitive myths, creative legends, stories of old gods. In purer and
less transformed versions the myths and legends of primitive peoples are
often scarcely less adapted to the child's mind. Julia Gayley argues
that the legends of early Greek civilization, the most perfect of all
dreams, should above all be revealed to children; the early traditions
of the East and of America yield material that is scarcely less fitted
for the child's imaginative uses. Portions of the Bible, especially of
Genesis, are in the strict sense fairy tales, that is legends of early
gods and their deeds which have become stories. In the opinion of many
these portions of the Bible may suitably be given to children (though it
is curious to observe that a Welsh Education Committee a few years ago
prohibited the reading in schools of precisely the most legendary part
of Genesis); but it must always be remembered, from the Christian point
of view, that nothing should be given at this early age which is to be
regarded as essential at a later age, for the youth turns against the
tales of his childhood as he turns against its milk-foods. Some day,
perhaps, it may be thought worth while to compile a Bible for childhood,
not a mere miscellaneous assortment of stories, but a collection of
books as various in origin and nature as are the books of the
Hebraic-Christian Bible, so that every kind of child in all his moods
and stages of growth might here find fit pasture. Children would not
then be left wholly to the mercy of the thin and frothy literature which
the contemporary press pours upon them so copiously; they would possess
at least one great and essential book which, however fantastic and
extravagant it might often be, would yet have sprung from the deepest
instincts of the primitive soul, and furnish answers to the most
insistent demands of primitive hearts. Such a book, even when finally
dropped from the youth's or girl's hands, would still leave its vague
perfume behind.
It may be pointed out, finally, that the fact that it is impossible to
teach children even the elements of adult religion and philosophy, as
well as unwise to attempt it, by no means proves that all serious
teaching is impossible in childhood. On the imaginative and spiritual
side, it is true, the child is re-born and transformed during
adolescence, but on the practical and concrete side his life and thought
are for the most part but the regular and orderly development of the
habits he has already acquired. The elements of ethics on the one hand,
as well as of natural science on the other, may alike be taught to
children, and indeed they become a necessary part of early education, if
the imaginative side of training is to be duly balanced and
complemented. The child as much as the adult can be taught, and is
indeed apt to learn, the meaning and value of truth and honesty, of
justice and pity, of kindness and courtesy; we have wrangled and worried
for so long concerning the teaching of religion in schools that we have
failed altogether to realize that these fundamental notions of morality
are a far more essential part of school training. It must, however,
always be remembered that they cannot be adequately treated merely as an
isolated subject of instruction, and possibly ought not to be so treated
at all. As Harriet Finlay-Johnson wisely says in her _Dramatic Method of
Instruction_: "It is impossible to shut away moral teaching into a
compartment of the mind. It should be firmly and openly diffused
throughout the thoughts, to 'leaven the whole of the lump.'" She adds
the fruitful suggestion: "There is real need for some lessons in which
the emotions shall not be ignored. Nature study, properly treated, can
touch both senses and emotions."[180]
The child is indeed quite apt to acquire a precise knowledge of the
natural objects around him, of flowers and plants and to some extent of
animals, objects which to the savage also are of absorbing interest. In
this way, under wise guidance, the caprices of his imagination may be
indirectly restrained and the lessons of life taught, while at the same
time he is thus being directly prepared for the serious studies which
must occupy so much of his later youth.
The child, we thus have to realize, is, from the educational point of
view of social hygiene, a being of dual nature, who needs ministering to
on both sides. On the one hand he demands the key to an imaginative
paradise which one day he must leave, bearing away with him, at the
best, only a dim and haunting memory of its beauty. On the other hand he
possesses eager aptitudes on which may be built up concrete knowledge
and the sense of human relationships, to serve as a firm foundation when
the period of adolescent development and discipline at length arrives.
FOOTNOTES:
[163] De Quincey in his _Confessions of an Opium Eater_ referred to the
power that many, perhaps most, children possess of seeing visions in the
dark. The phenomenon has been carefully studied by G.L. Partridge
(_Pedagogical Seminary_, April, 1898) in over 800 children. He found
that 58.5 of them aged between thirteen and sixteen could see visions or
images at night with closed eyes before falling asleep; of those aged
six the proportion was higher. There seemed to be a maximum at the age
of ten, and probably another maximum at a much earlier age. Among adults
this tendency is rudimentary, and only found in a marked form in
neurasthenic subjects or at moments of nervous exhaustion. See also
Havelock Ellis, _The World of Dreams_, chap. II.
[164] G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering
School," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891.
[165] "The mother's face and voice are the first conscious objects as the
infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of
God to her child. All the religion of which the child is capable during
this by no means brief stage of its development consists of these
sentiments--gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc.--now felt only for
her, which are later directed towards God. The less these are now
cultivated towards the mother, who is now their only fitting if not
their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt
towards God. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness of the
responsibilities of motherhood." (G. Stanley Hall, _Pedagogical
Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 199).
[166] J. Morse, _American Journal of Religious Psychology_, 1911, p. 247.
[167] Lobsien, "Kinderideale," _Zeitschrift für Päd. Psychologie_, 1903.
[168] Mr. Edmond Holmes, formerly Chief Inspector of Elementary Education
in England, has an instructive remark bearing on this point in his
suggestive book, _What Is and What Might be_ (1911, p. 88): "The first
forty minutes of the morning session are given in almost every
elementary school to what is called _Religious Instruction_. This goes
on, morning after morning, and week after week. The fact that the
English parent, who must himself have attended from 1500 to 2000
Scripture lessons in his schooldays, is not under any circumstance to be
trusted to give religious instruction to his own children, shows that
those who control the religious education of the youthful 'masses' have
but little confidence in the effects of their system on the religious
life and faith of the English people." Miss Harriet Finlay-Johnson, a
highly original and successful elementary school teacher, speaks (_The
Dramatic Method of Teaching_, 1911, p. 170) with equal disapproval of
the notion that any moral value attaches to the ordinary school
examinations in "Scripture."
[169] If it were not so, England, after sixty years of National Schools,
ought to be a devout nation of good Church people. Most of the criminals
and outcasts have been taught in Church Schools. A clergyman, who points
this out to me, adds: "I am heartily thankful that religion was never
forced on me as a child. I do not think I had any religion, in the
ethical sense, until puberty, or any conscious realization of religion,
indeed, until nineteen." "The boy," remarks Holmes (_op. cit._, p. 100),
"who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself
when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,'
is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured
rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which
he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to
himself, his inmost soul demands."
[170] _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, Part V, Letter 3. In more recent times Ellen
Key remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her
_Century of the Child_: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion
is in human nature than the fact that 'religious education' has not been
able to tear it out."
[171] J.S. Mill, _Letters_, Vol. II, p. 135.
[172] Lancaster found ("The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence,"
_Pedagogical Seminary_, July, 1897) that among 598 individuals of both
sexes in the United States, as many as 518 experienced new religious
emotions between the ages of 12 and 20, only 80 having no such emotions
at this period, so that more than 5 out of 6 have this experience; it is
really even more frequent, for it has no necessary tendency to fall into
conventional religious moulds.
[173] Professor Starbuck, in his _Psychology of Religion_, has well
brought together and clearly presented much of the evidence showing this
intimate association between adolescence and religious manifestations.
He finds (Chap. III) that in females there are two tidal waves of
religious awakening, one at about 13, the other at 16, with a less
significant period at 18; for males, after a wavelet at 12, the great
tidal wave is at 16, followed by another at 18 or 19. Ruediger's results
are fairly concordant ("The Period of Mental Reconstruction," _American
Journal of Psychology_, July, 1907); he finds that in women the average
age of conversion is 14, in men it is at 13 or 14, and again at 18.