come back to it. The whole theory of the school is on the nurse’s or
mother’s knee. The child is as hot to learn as the mother is to impart.
There is mutual delight. The joy of our childhood in hearing beautiful
stories from some skilful aunt who loves to tell them, must be repeated
in youth. The boy wishes to learn to skate, to coast, to catch a fish
in the brook, to hit a mark with a snowball or a stone; and a boy a
little older is just as well pleased to teach him these sciences.
Not less delightful is the mutual pleasure of teaching and learning
the secret of algebra, or of chemistry, or of good reading and good
recitation of poetry or of prose, or of chosen facts in history or in
biography.
Nature provided for the communication of thought, by planting with
it in the receiving mind a fury to impart it. ’Tis so in every art,
in every science. One burns to tell the new fact, the other burns to
hear it. See how far a young doctor will ride or walk to witness a new
surgical operation. I have seen a carriage-maker’s shop emptied of all
its workmen into the street, to scrutinize a new pattern from New York.
So in literature, the young man who has taste for poetry, for fine
images, for noble thoughts, is insatiable for this nourishment, and
forgets all the world for the more learned friend,--who finds equal joy
in dealing out his treasures.
Happy the natural college thus self-instituted around every natural
teacher; the young men of Athens around Socrates; of Alexandria around
Plotinus; of Paris around Abelard; of Germany around Fichte, or
Niebuhr, or Goethe: in short the natural sphere of every leading mind.
But the moment this is organized, difficulties begin. The college was
to be the nurse and home of genius; but, though every young man is born
with some determination in his nature, and is a potential genius; is
at last to be one; it is, in the most, obstructed and delayed, and,
whatever they may hereafter be, their senses are now opened in advance
of their minds. They are more sensual than intellectual. Appetite and
indolence they have, but no enthusiasm. These come in numbers to the
college: few geniuses: and the teaching comes to be arranged for these
many, and not for those few. Hence the instruction seems to require
skilful tutors, of accurate and systematic mind, rather than ardent and
inventive masters. Besides, the youth of genius are eccentric, won’t
drill, are irritable, uncertain, explosive, solitary, not men of the
world, not good for every-day association. You have to work for large
classes instead of individuals; you must lower your flag and reef your
sails to wait for the dull sailors; you grow departmental, routinary,
military almost with your discipline and college police. But what doth
such a school to form a great and heroic character? What abiding Hope
can it inspire? What Reformer will it nurse? What poet will it breed to
sing to the human race? What discoverer of Nature’s laws will it prompt
to enrich us by disclosing in the mind the statute which all matter
must obey? What fiery soul will it send out to warm a nation with
his charity? What tranquil mind will it have fortified to walk with
meekness in private and obscure duties, to wait and to suffer? Is it
not manifest that our academic institutions should have a wider scope;
that they should not be timid and keep the ruts of the last generation,
but that wise men thinking for themselves and heartily seeking the good
of mankind, and counting the cost of innovation, should dare to arouse
the young to a just and heroic life; that the moral nature should be
addressed in the school-room, and children should be treated as the
high-born candidates of truth and virtue?
So to regard the young child, the young man, requires, no doubt, rare
patience: a patience that nothing but faith in the remedial forces
of the soul can give. You see his sensualism; you see his want of
those tastes and perceptions which make the power and safety of your
character. Very likely. But he has something else. If he has his own
vice, he has its correlative virtue. Every mind should be allowed to
make its own statement in action, and its balance will appear. In these
judgments one needs that foresight which was attributed to an eminent
reformer, of whom it was said “his patience could see in the bud of the
aloe the blossom at the end of a hundred years.” Alas for the cripple
Practice when it seeks to come up with the bird Theory, which flies
before it. Try your design on the best school. The scholars are of all
ages and temperaments and capacities. It is difficult to class them,
some are too young, some are slow, some perverse. Each requires so
much consideration, that the morning hope of the teacher, of a day of
love and progress, is often closed at evening by despair. Each single
case, the more it is considered, shows more to be done; and the strict
conditions of the hours, on one side, and the number of tasks, on the
other. Whatever becomes of our method, the conditions stand fast,--six
hours, and thirty, fifty, or a hundred and fifty pupils. Something must
be done, and done speedily, and in this distress the wisest are tempted
to adopt violent means, to proclaim martial law, corporal punishment,
mechanical arrangement, bribes, spies, wrath, main strength and
ignorance, in lieu of that wise genial providential influence they had
hoped, and yet hope at some future day to adopt. Of course the devotion
to details reacts injuriously on the teacher. He cannot indulge his
genius, he cannot delight in personal relations with young friends,
when his eye is always on the clock, and twenty classes are to be dealt
with before the day is done. Besides, how can he please himself with
genius, and foster modest virtue? A sure proportion of rogue and dunce
finds its way into every school and requires a cruel share of time, and
the gentle teacher, who wished to be a Providence to youth, is grown
a martinet, sore with suspicions; knows as much vice as the judge of
a police court, and his love of learning is lost in the routine of
grammars and books of elements.
A rule is so easy that it does not need a man to apply it; an
automaton, a machine, can be made to keep a school so. It facilitates
labor and thought so much that there is always the temptation in large
schools to omit the endless task of meeting the wants of each single
mind, and to govern by steam. But it is at frightful cost. Our modes of
Education aim to expedite, to save labor; to do for masses what cannot
be done for masses, what must be done reverently, one by one: say
rather, the whole world is needed for the tuition of each pupil. The
advantages of this system of emulation and display are so prompt and
obvious, it is such a time-saver, it is so energetic on slow and on bad
natures, and is of so easy application, needing no sage or poet, but
any tutor or schoolmaster in his first term can apply it,--that it is
not strange that this calomel of culture should be a popular medicine.
On the other hand, total abstinence from this drug, and the adoption
of simple discipline and the following of nature, involves at once
immense claims on the time, the thoughts, on the life of the teacher.
It requires time, use, insight, event, all the great lessons and
assistances of God; and only to think of using it implies character and
profoundness; to enter on this course of discipline is to be good and
great. It is precisely analogous to the difference between the use of
corporal punishment and the methods of love. It is so easy to bestow on
a bad boy a blow, overpower him, and get obedience without words, that
in this world of hurry and distraction, who can wait for the returns
of reason and the conquest of self; in the uncertainty too whether
that will ever come? And yet the familiar observation of the universal
compensations might suggest the fear that so summary a stop of a bad
humor was more jeopardous than its continuance.
Now the correction of this quack practice is to import into Education
the wisdom of life. Leave this military hurry and adopt the pace of
Nature. Her secret is patience. Do you know how the naturalist learns
all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of
reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he goes into the
woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to the
river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone.
His secret is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue;
he is a log. These creatures have no value for their time, and he must
put as low a rate on his. By dint of obstinate sitting still, reptile,
fish, bird and beast, which all wish to return to their haunts, begin
to return. He sits still; if they approach, he remains passive as the
stone he sits upon. They lose their fear. They have curiosity too about
him. By and by the curiosity masters the fear, and they come swimming,
creeping and flying towards him; and as he is still immovable, they
not only resume their haunts and their ordinary labors and manners,
show themselves to him in their work-day trim, but also volunteer
some degree of advances towards fellowship and good understanding
with a biped who behaves so civilly and well. Can you not baffle the
impatience and passion of the child by your tranquillity? Can you not
wait for him, as Nature and Providence do? Can you not keep for his
mind and ways, for his secret, the same curiosity you give to the
squirrel, snake, rabbit, and the sheldrake and the deer? He has a
secret; wonderful methods in him; he is,--every child,--a new style
of man; give him time and opportunity. Talk of Columbus and Newton!
I tell you the child just born in yonder hovel is the beginning of a
revolution as great as theirs. But you must have the believing and
prophetic eye. Have the self-command you wish to inspire. Your teaching
and discipline must have the reserve and taciturnity of Nature. Teach
them to hold their tongues by holding your own. Say little; do not
snarl; do not chide; but govern by the eye. See what they need, and
that the right thing is done.
I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms
in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a
school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy,
of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and
perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions
and address individuals. The will, the male power, organizes, imposes
its own thought and wish on others, and makes that military eye
which controls boys as it controls men; admirable in its results,
a fortune to him who has it, and only dangerous when it leads the
workman to overvalue and overuse it and precludes him from finer
means. Sympathy, the female force,--which they must use who have not
the first,--deficient in instant control and the breaking down of
resistance, is more subtle and lasting and creative. I advise teachers
to cherish mother-wit. I assume that you will keep the grammar,
reading, writing and arithmetic in order; ’tis easy and of course you
will. But smuggle in a little contraband wit, fancy, imagination,
thought. If you have a taste which you have suppressed because it
is not shared by those about you, tell them that. Set this law up,
whatever becomes of the rules of the school: they must not whisper,
much less talk; but if one of the young people says a wise thing, greet
it, and let all the children clap their hands. They shall have no book
but school-books in the room; but if one has brought in a Plutarch or
Shakspeare or Don Quixote or Goldsmith or any other good book, and
understands what he reads, put him at once at the head of the class.
Nobody shall be disorderly, or leave his desk without permission, but
if a boy runs from his bench, or a girl, because the fire falls, or
to check some injury that a little dastard is inflicting behind his
desk on some helpless sufferer, take away the medal from the head of
the class and give it on the instant to the brave rescuer. If a child
happens to show that he knows any fact about astronomy, or plants, or
birds, or rocks, or history, that interests him and you, hush all the
classes and encourage him to tell it so that all may hear. Then you
have made your school-room like the world. Of course you will insist
on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the
boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you
right, hug him!
To whatsoever upright mind, to whatsoever beating heart I speak, to you
it is committed to educate men. By simple living, by an illimitable
soul, you inspire, you correct, you instruct, you raise, you embellish
all. By your own act you teach the beholder how to do the practicable.
According to the depth from which you draw your life, such is the depth
not only of your strenuous effort, but of your manners and presence.
The beautiful nature of the world has here blended your happiness with
your power. Work straight on in absolute duty, and you lend an arm and
an encouragement to all the youth of the universe. Consent yourself to
be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men
in your debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on
with waves of benefit to the borders of society, to the circumference
of things.
THE SUPERLATIVE.
WHEN wrath and terror changed Jove’s regal port
And the rash-leaping thunderbolt fell short.
For Art, for Music overthrilled,
The wine-cup shakes, the wine is spilled.
THE SUPERLATIVE.[7]
THE doctrine of temperance is one of many degrees. It is usually taught
on a low platform, but one of great necessity,--that of meats and
drinks, and its importance cannot be denied and hardly exaggerated.
But it is a long way from the Maine Law to the heights of absolute
self-command which respect the conservatism of the entire energies of
the body, the mind, and the soul. I wish to point at some of its higher
functions as it enters into mind and character.
There is a superlative temperament which has no medium range, but
swiftly oscillates from the freezing to the boiling point, and which
affects the manners of those who share it with a certain desperation.
Their aspect is grimace. They go tearing, convulsed through
life,--wailing, praying, exclaiming, swearing. We talk, sometimes, with
people whose conversation would lead you to suppose that they had lived
in a museum, where all the objects were monsters and extremes. Their
good people are phœnixes; their naughty are like the prophet’s figs.
They use the superlative of grammar: “most perfect,” “most exquisite,”
“most horrible.” Like the French, they are enchanted, they are
desolate, because you have got or have not got a shoe-string or a wafer
you happen to want,--not perceiving that superlatives are diminutives,
and weaken; that the positive is the sinew of speech, the superlative
the fat. If the talker lose a tooth, he thinks the universal thaw and
dissolution of things has come. Controvert his opinion and he cries
“Persecution!” and reckons himself with Saint Barnabas, who was sawn in
two.
Especially we note this tendency to extremes in the pleasant excitement
of horror-mongers. Is there something so delicious in disasters and
pain? Bad news is always exaggerated, and we may challenge Providence
to send a fact so tragical that we cannot contrive to make it a little
worse in our gossip.
All this comes of poverty. We are unskilful definers. From want of
skill to convey quality, we hope to move admiration by quantity.
Language should aim to describe the fact. It is not enough to suggest
it and magnify it. Sharper sight would indicate the true line. ’Tis
very wearisome, this straining talk, these experiences all exquisite,
intense and tremendous,--“The best I ever saw;” “I never in my life!”
One wishes these terms gazetted and forbidden. Every favorite is not
a cherub, nor every cat a griffin, nor each unpleasing person a dark,
diabolical intriguer; nor agonies, excruciations nor ecstasies our
daily bread.
Horace Walpole relates that in the expectation, current in London a
century ago, of a great earthquake, some people provided themselves
with dresses for the occasion. But one would not wear earthquake
dresses or resurrection robes for a working jacket, nor make a codicil
to his will whenever he goes out to ride; and the secrets of death,
judgment and eternity are tedious when recurring as minute-guns.
Thousands of people live and die who were never, on a single occasion,
hungry or thirsty, or furious or terrified. The books say, “It made
my hair stand on end!” Who, in our municipal life, ever had such an
experience? Indeed, I believe that much of the rhetoric of terror,--“It
froze my blood,” “It made my knees knock,” etc.--most men have realized
only in dreams and nightmares.
Then there is an inverted superlative, or superlative contrary, which
shivers, like Demophoön, in the sun: wants fan and parasol on the
cold Friday; is tired by sleep; feeds on drugs and poisons; finds the
rainbow a discoloration; hates birds and flowers.
The exaggeration of which I complain makes plain fact the more welcome
and refreshing. It is curious that a face magnified in a concave
mirror loses its expression. All this overstatement is needless. A
little fact is worth a whole limbo of dreams, and I can well spare the
exaggerations which appear to me screens to conceal ignorance. Among
these glorifiers, the coldest stickler for names and dates and measures
cannot lament his criticism and coldness of fancy. Think how much
pains astronomers and opticians have taken to procure an achromatic
lens. Discovery in the heavens has waited for it; discovery on the
face of the earth not less. I hear without sympathy the complaint of
young and ardent persons that they find life no region of romance,
with no enchanter, no giant, no fairies, nor even muses. I am very
much indebted to my eyes, and am content that they should see the real
world, always geometrically finished without blur or halo. The more I
am engaged with it the more it suffices.
How impatient we are, in these northern latitudes, of looseness and
intemperance in speech! Our measure of success is the moderation and
low level of an individual’s judgment. Doctor Channing’s piety and
wisdom had such weight that, in Boston, the popular idea of religion
was whatever this eminent divine held. But I remember that his best
friend, a man of guarded lips, speaking of him in a circle of his
admirers, said: “I have known him long, I have studied his character,
and I believe him capable of virtue.” An eminent French journalist paid
a high compliment to the Duke of Wellington, when his documents were
published: “Here are twelve volumes of military dispatches, and the
word _glory_ is not found in them.”
The English mind is arithmetical, values exactness, likes literal
statement; stigmatizes any heat or hyperbole as Irish, French, Italian,
and infers weakness and inconsequence of character in speakers who
use it. It does not love the superlative but the positive degree.
Our customary and mechanical existence is not favorable to flights;
long nights and frost hold us pretty fast to realities. The people of
English stock, in all countries, are a solid people, wearing good hats
and shoes, and owners of land whose title-deeds are properly recorded.
Their houses are of wood, and brick, and stone, not designed to reel
in earthquakes, nor blow about through the air much in hurricanes, nor
to be lost under sand-drifts, nor to be made bonfires of by whimsical
viziers; but to stand as commodious, rentable tenements for a century
or two. All our manner of life is on a secure and moderate pattern,
such as can last. Violence and extravagance are, once for all,
distasteful; competence, quiet, comfort, are the agreed welfare.
Ever a low style is best. “I judge by every man’s truth of his degree
of understanding,” said Chesterfield. And I do not know any advantage
more conspicuous which a man owes to his experience in markets and
the Exchange, or politics, than the caution and accuracy he acquires
in his report of facts. “Uncle Joel’s news is always true,” said a
person to me with obvious satisfaction, and said it justly; for the old
head, after deceiving and being deceived many times, thinks, “What’s
the use of having to unsay to-day what I said yesterday? I will not
be responsible; I will not add an epithet. I will be as moderate as
the fact, and will use the same expression, without color, which I
received; and rather repeat it several times, word for word, than vary
it ever so little.”
The first valuable power in a reasonable mind, one would say, was
the power of plain statement, or the power to receive things as they
befall, and to transfer the picture of them to another mind unaltered.
’Tis a good rule of rhetoric which Schlegel gives,--“In good prose,
every word is underscored;” which, I suppose, means, Never italicize.
Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use a short and positive
speech. They are never off their centres. As soon as they swell and
paint and find truth not enough for them, softening of the brain has
already begun. It seems as if inflation were a disease incident to
too much use of words, and the remedy lay in recourse to things. I am
daily struck with the forcible understatement of people who have no
literary habit. The low expression is strong and agreeable. The citizen
dwells in delusions. His dress and draperies, house and stables, occupy
him. The poor countryman, having no circumstance of carpets, coaches,
dinners, wine and dancing in his head to confuse him, is able to look
straight at you, without refraction or prismatic glories, and he sees
whether you see straight also, or whether your head is addled by this
mixture of wines.
The common people diminish: “a cold snap;” “it rains easy;” “good
haying weather.” When a farmer means to tell you that he is doing
well with his farm, he says, “I don’t work as hard as I did, and I
don’t mean to.” When he wishes to condemn any treatment of soils or of
stock, he says, “It won’t do any good.” Under the Catskill Mountains
the boy in the steamboat said, “Come up here, Tony; it looks pretty
out-of-doors.” The farmers in the region do not call particular
summits, as Killington, Camel’s Hump, Saddle-back, etc., mountains, but
only “them ’ere rises,” and reserve the word mountains for the range.
I once attended a dinner given to a great state functionary by
functionaries,--men of law, state, and trade. The guest was a great man
in his own country and an honored diplomatist in this. His health was
drunk with some acknowledgment of his distinguished services to both
countries, and followed by nine cold hurrahs. There was the vicious
superlative. Then the great official spoke and beat his breast, and
declared that he should remember this honor to the latest moment of his
existence. He was answered again by officials. Pity, thought I, they
should lie so about their keen sensibility to the nine cold hurrahs
and to the commonplace compliment of a dinner. Men of the world value
truth, in proportion to their ability; not by its sacredness, but for
its convenience. Of such, especially of diplomatists, one has a right
to expect wit and ingenuity to avoid the lie if they must comply with
the form. Now, I had been present, a little before, in the country at a
cattle-show dinner, which followed an agricultural discourse delivered
by a farmer: the discourse, to say the truth, was bad; and one of our
village fathers gave at the dinner this toast: “The orator of the
day: his subject deserves the attention of every farmer.” The caution
of the toast did honor to our village father. I wish great lords and
diplomatists had as much respect for truth.
But whilst thus everything recommends simplicity and temperance of
action; the utmost directness, the positive degree, we mean thereby
that “rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument.”
Whenever the true objects of action appear, they are to be heartily
sought. Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the
human to the divine.