It is a known fact that the higher an animal stands in the scale of
development, the more helpless and dependent it is immediately after
birth. The lowest of all classes of animals, the _Amœba_, as soon
as it comes into separate existence by partition, possesses all the
properties and faculties which are requisite to its life, or which it
ever can attain. The higher the genus is, the longer the time after
the commencement of individual life before the animal is capable of
caring for itself independently. The highest class, the Mammal, needs
maternal nourishment longer than any other being. The highest organized
creature, Man, develops more slowly and needs parental care longer
than anything that lives on earth. Among men, again, the rapidity of
individual development is in inverse proportion to the general state of
civilization of the people from whom that individual springs. Savages
develop faster than children among civilized peoples, and the woman
comes to maturity earlier than the male.
The rapidity of development can afford no indication of the later
mental powers. A child which at seven years of age is uncommonly large
does not necessarily continue to grow in the same proportion. On the
contrary, it may turn out a short man; and we often see boys who are
small up to sixteen develop into tall men. Quite as little can we
predict that a precocious child will show distinguished ability when
it grows up; and backward children sometimes develop remarkable minds.
Linnæus, the great botanist, in his youth so neglected his classical
studies that his parents intended, on account of his poor progress at
school, to apprentice him to a shoemaker. But a physician remarked the
boy’s talent, and induced them to send him to the gymnasium.[95] Newton
was a dreamy child and for a long time was at the foot of his class.
Far more important than the rapidity of mental development--upon
which vain parents are unfortunately apt to lay too great stress, to
the detriment of the child--is the uniformity of formation of the
different psychical factors. We have seen that mental degeneracy
does not necessarily imply a small degree of general development. It
mostly consists of a defective proportionality of the different mental
elements, and a disturbance of inward balance.
The correct proportion of the impulses to the inhibiting intellect; the
equilibrium between the understanding and the feelings, between the
will, the attention, and the unconscious action of the brain, of the
fancy; a faculty of apprehension and memory in concord with the other
mental functions; a corresponding action of association--all these are
conditions for sane mental action.
Sollier[96] rightly remarks that the state of the idiot is neither
like that of the child nor like that of the animal, for in the
child, as well as in the animal, the mental characters are suitably
proportionate, and the expression of the soul shows nothing morbid.
A rational education must therefore aim chiefly at a uniformity of
mental development. Especially must it attend to this in the treatment
of children that have shown at home a defect of mental balance. There
are children that from earliest youth have disproportionately strong
impulses. There are others in whom there is a particularly strong
development of feeling and an unusually tender heart. If such children
do not receive suitable treatment, their state, which as a rule is
somewhat exalted of itself, may easily pass into hysteria. On the other
hand, many children have very little feeling. In common parlance, they
are “cold natures.” In others, again, the faculty of concentrating
their thoughts is more weakly developed than their other qualities.
It is a moot question what influence education can have upon character,
especially how far it is able to correct disturbances of the process
of growth, and thus to prevent the occurrence of mental diseases. An
opinion defended by many is, that education has no influence whatever
upon the formation of character. It is said that genius, under all
circumstances, be the education good or bad, will “force its way.” On
the other hand, “born criminals,” it is said, in spite of the best
education, are destined to become criminals. All this I hold to be
absolutely false. But the contrary opinion, which makes the character
a product of education alone, and the whole mental life to depend upon
nothing but the experiences of the individual concerned, is a downright
absurdity. This is maintained by a schoolmaster, Gustav Hauffe,[97] who
takes for his motto, “Man is mentally only what education has made him
to be.” Dressed out in vestments of the most fashionably scientific cut
(his first part is entitled “Analytical and Synthetical Psychology”),
the author communicates his discovery that at birth the mind of man is
a _tabula rasa_ and that the diversity of its later development is to
be referred exclusively to differences of education and of experience.
Were it possible to educate two men exactly alike, they must, he
thinks, grow up precisely alike. Were a child to receive precisely
the same education and the same impressions as fell to the lot of
Goethe, he would necessarily become just as great a man. The doctrine
is that the whole mental action is analyzable into impressions of
sense, their associations, and ideas due to associative suggestion.
From this discovery the author undertakes to demonstrate the theorem
that “Schiller could never have written Laura am Klavier if no piano
and no Laura had existed.” To examine such nonsense would be a waste
of time. A windmill can not make meal unless it is fed with grain, as
every child knows, but, nevertheless, it is not the grain that runs
the mill, but the wind. Were all impressions withheld from a man as
far as possible, as in the case of Caspar Hauser, it is certain that,
even in a man capable of developing genius, mental action would be
at a standstill. But for all that, impressions by themselves could
effect nothing were there no mental powers to react upon them. The best
education can not convert a dullard into a sage nor an idiot into a
genius.
To treat of the importance of education and set forth its psychological
principles in full would be the theme of a large book. I limit myself
here to some considerations which lead me to regard education as of
great importance for the development of character, particularly in the
case of a genius.
A child that from its earliest childhood is accustomed to suffer
want and to see vice and cruelty necessarily has its feelings
dulled. How far in later life heart and sentiment may appear will
depend upon the proportion which the evil influence may bear to its
original and natural disposition. A child in which the exercise of
the intellect is altogether neglected will, at all events, be in
later years less strong than if it had had a solid training of the
understanding. The same thing, _mutatis mutandis_, is true for the
other mental characteristics--attention, the power of apprehension,
memory, the action of association and suggestion, fancy, will, energy,
perseverance, etc. All these powers are capable of being greatly
affected by exercise and custom.
Experience shows that even with ordinary men impressions received in
youth are the most durable, and in many respects may have a momentous
influence upon the whole life. In a child endowed with genius this must
be true in much higher measure, for such a child, even in its earliest
years, observes surrounding events with marvellous acuteness; it
assimilates its impressions much more thoroughly, and infers much more
from them than an ordinary child. Moreover, owing to its lively fancy,
it will be much more affected by all influences, whether good or bad.
Thus Nohl[98] says of Mozart: “Even as a child he was full of fire and
life; and without the admirable education which his earnest and strict
father gave him, he might have become the most reckless miscreant, so
sensitive was he to every excitation to whose good or bad influence
he was of an age to respond.” When Goethe in his sixth year heard of
the great earthquake at Lisbon, in which sixty thousand persons were
swallowed up in the twinkling of an eye, religious doubt arose for the
first time within him, and his faith in the goodness of Providence was
shattered.
Great men have in most cases shown uncommonly high mental capacity in
their tenderest years. But this is not true without exception, for
there have been geniuses who were quite ordinary children. On the
other hand, it is a fact that frequently children that have matured
early and seemed to be highly gifted have not in later years fulfilled
the promise of their childhood. In part this may be a purely natural
phenomenon, due to no outward causes. But in many cases the outward
circumstances are traceable; and in particular a bad education has
been to blame for the loss to the world of the fruits of, perhaps, an
important genius.
Education is the foundation upon which the whole man is built up.
Youthful impressions are not only decisive in their effect upon the
development of character, but they may even induce a predisposition to
diseases of the nerves and of the mind. It is altogether probable that,
among the innumerable cases which are set down as hereditary nervous
diseases, a considerable percentage is due less to actual inheritance
than to the impressions which a child has received from a hysterical
mother or from a father given to drink, combined with a defective
education.
Von Krafft-Ebing[99] says: “Next to the organization of his brain,
a man has to thank his education for the idiosyncrasy of his mental
existence. Sometimes organization and education co-operate in calling
forth psychopathic predispositions, for parents not only in procreation
transmit an unfortunate organic constitution, but also upon the ground
of this organization afflicted with morbid passions, moral faults, and
eccentricities, further communicate their eccentricities and moral
transgressions to their children by their bad example and by mistaken
education.”
Griesinger[100] says: “We agree with Ideler in thinking that there
are cases of so-called hereditary insanity which are not principally
due to the transmission of an organic disposition. A later psychical
propagation of characteristic peculiarities takes place. The child
imitates the example of certain eccentricities and of certain bizarre
and perverse tendencies and views of life; and this hinders the
commencement of the development of a healthy soul harmonizing with the
outward world. In this way hysteria may be communicated from a mother
to a daughter. So, too, may foolish or half-foolish parents infect
their children with mental distortions; and so passionateness and evil
inclination may set their impress upon young minds. It is to be added
that by such a state of the parents family life is often discomposed,
and thus the co-operation of those happy circumstances which are
essential requisites for the harmonious development of the child’s
character is destroyed.”
It is not of the first consequence in education, especially with
precocious children, what and how much the child shall learn; for the
lacunæ of knowledge can, by the exercise of energy, always be filled
up. But the faculty of apprehension, the capacity for logical thought,
attentive concentration, close observation, etc., are things which
must be exercised from youth up; and it is very difficult to make good
in later years any deficiency which education may have left in these
respects.
Care must be taken that the bodily training does not lag behind the
mental. This is specially requisite for precocious children. Their
ambition must be restrained within limits. They must not be allowed
to give themselves over to enthusiastic dreamings. Conceit and
vanity should be checked by hard facts. Moreover, such children are
particularly liable to a too early awakening of sexual impulses and
other sexual irregularities which require the closest attention from
their tutors. It is of great importance that children should early
appreciate the fundamental conceptions of morals, love of truth, the
obligation of a promise, unselfishness, etc. Yet too great an emphasis
upon these things is to be avoided, since the contrary effect may
easily be produced, inasmuch as for the attainment of the desired
result love and faith on the part of the child are requisite above
all. Of the greatest importance for the formation of character are the
development of the heart, refinement of feeling and sentiment, which
must be implanted in the child from its earliest childhood. “Much
can be effected under unfavorable circumstances by an intelligent
education. This must be adapted to the individual and free from
pedantry. It should be directed not to the formation of the intellect
alone, but also to that of the heart. This is the point in the
importance of which pedagogy, rightly conceived and treated, joins
with the doctrine of heredity.”[101]
On children of lively fancy and fine feelings stories about fabulous
things and supernatural phenomena often have a bad effect, above all
when they are made use of to put children into a fright. In some
dispositions such methods of education may induce severe hysterical
states. “This detestable method of bringing up,” says Mosso,[102] “has
not yet disappeared; children are to this day agonized with stories
of Knecht Ruprecht, of fabulous monsters, werewolves, magicians, and
sorcerers. Every minute somebody says to children: ‘He will eat you
up’; ‘This bites you’; ‘Call the dog’; ‘There is the chimney-sweep’;
and a hundred other terrors which bring them to tears and deform their
friendly character by distressing them with constant threats, by a
system of torture which makes them timid and weak.”
Children that are inclined to dreaminess, in whom fancy is active
and threatens to dispossesses the pure intellectual action, require
particular care, so that the child may as early as possible receive a
strong impression of the realities of life, and that there is in those
realities a stern and inflexible order, and as truthful a general
idea of what that order is like as possible. Pains must be taken to
prevent nurses’ tales, religious mysticism, and mythological fictions
from overexciting the fancy. It is in the knowledge of real things and
facts--first, the sense that there is a reality altogether different
from fancies; second, that it is undeviating in its order; third,
something of what that order is like--this must be the turning point of
education for imaginative children. If these precautions are not taken
by their parents, those children of fancy will be filled with images
utterly foreign to the real nature of things. Then, in later years,
when life presents itself to them in its naked truth, and castles in
the air come tumbling over their heads, they will find themselves
astray in the world, with nothing to protect them but fine words
unintelligible to the citizens, and will be hooted at and run down as
cranks and monkeys of genius.
While the superintendence of the scientific education is the affair of
the father and of the pedagogue, it is the mother’s duty to look after
the formation of the heart and the sentiments. And what a momentous
charge is this! Think what that is to a man! Think what it is to a man
of genius! And what wonder is it that it should be popularly believed
that all great men were remarkably influenced by their mothers? Alas!
Alas! How many of the women of to-day see in this holy duty their
highest throne, their completest royalty? Modern economy compels many
women to work, and therefore to economize their intercourse with their
children. In such a case the fault lies with our social institutions
and not with the poor mothers, although there are even hard working
women, who somehow contrive to care for the corporal well-being of
their children, and for their spiritual health and nourishment too.
But how is it with well-to-do ladies, who have time and means enough
to spend upon their children? Do they, for the most part, see in the
education of their children the great purpose of life? Do they feel
their highest bliss in self-forgetful, loving surrender of themselves
to this natural office? Yes, there are such mothers; and the number
of them measures the vitality of our civilization. They receive the
supreme homage which is their due. They receive it in their persons,
and it is extended to every woman who can be presumed to fulfil that
function or to be about to fulfil it. The vulgar throng of women are
not of that sort. Many women are honest enough to confess that the
education of their children is burdensome to them and that they find
no pleasure in it. They shift the irksome burden to the shoulders of
a stranger. Some mothers are foolish enough to think that a mother’s
love could be replaced by money. They believe that they fulfill their
duty by seeing that their children’s food is wholesome and their
clothes handsome. Perhaps they hire accomplished governesses or send
their children to expensive boarding-schools. But can a stranger ever
replace a true mother’s heart? No, never. Children who have lost a
mother are to be pitied. But children whose mother lives and is only
such a guardian to them as those above mentioned are in far worse
plight. The former can at least carry in their hearts the ideal of a
mother’s love; but for the latter even this is torn to rags, and with
it one of the anchors of life is lost. Many mothers use their children
to satisfy their personal vanity. From this motive they rig them out
like monkeys and flaunt around with them; they teach them speeches like
parrots, so as to be able to boast of them and occupy attention with
them, and that they can tell themselves that they have been doing their
children some good. It is not the ennobling of the childish heart that
is the motive of such mothers’ action, but the satisfaction of their
own petty vanity.
I have already said that with children of high mental gifts and
with precociously developed power of apprehension the influence of
youthful impressions, as well as their whole education, is of uncommon
importance for their after-life. Let us cast a glance upon the youth
and education of some super-eminent men.
Of Goethe it is said:
“Seldom has a boy exhibited such completeness of human faculties.
The multiplied activity of his life is prefigured in the varied
tendencies of his childhood. We see him as an orderly, somewhat formal,
inquisitive, reasoning, deliberative child, a precocious learner, an
omnivorous reader, and a vigorous logician who thinks for himself--so
independent that at six years of age he doubts the beneficence of the
Creator, at seven doubts the competence and justice of the world’s
judgment. He is inventive, poetical, proud, loving, volatile, with a
mind open to all influences, swayed by every gust, and yet, while thus
swayed as to the direction of his activity, master over himself.”[103]
One sees from this short picture what enormous influence education and
the impressions of childhood must have had upon his after-life. His
mind was “open to all influences, swayed by every gust.” The careful
education which young Goethe received aided in no small degree in the
unfolding of his mighty genius. His father conducted the education with
strictness and conscientiousness, and the scientific instruction was
systematically arranged.
His excellent mother knew how to mould her child’s tender heart in
its early childhood, how to bring his fancy into exercise, and how
to impress him with a sense of the noble and the beautiful. Her
relations with her children are truly touching. She herself reports
how she told stories every evening to little Wolfgang and his sister
Cornelia: “I could not be tired of telling them as long as he was
not tired of listening. I represented Fire, Water, Earth, and Air
as beautiful princesses, and gave a meaning to all that goes on in
Nature. I believed in it myself more implicitly than my listeners did;
and when we pretended there were roads between the stars, and that
we should some time live in stars, and thought what great spirits we
should meet up there, nobody was ever more eager than I for the hour of
story telling with the children, nor more vexed when some invitation
I had received prevented it. There sat I, and there was he devouring
me with his great black eyes; and if the fate of any favourite did
not go right according to his sense, I could see how the angry vein
would swell in his forehead and how he would choke down his tears.
Many a time he would interfere before I could bring about the turn of
affairs, and would say, ‘I hope, mother, that the princess will not
marry the accursed tailor even if he did slay the giant?’ Then if I
made a halt and put off the catastrophe to the next evening, I could
be sure that he would repeat everything aright up to that point, and
where my imagination fell short it would often be patched out by his.
Then, if I took up the threads of fate on the next evening and turned
them according to his plan and said, ‘You guessed it! that is what
happened!’ he would be all fire and flame, and his little heart could
be seen to beat under his ruffle. He was his grandmother’s pet, and to
her he would confide all his ideas of how the story would go; and from
her I would learn how it must run to conform to his wishes; and in this
way there was a secret diplomatic transaction between us which neither
of us betrayed to the other. So I had the satisfaction of continuing
my tales to the delight and astonishment of my auditor, who, without
recognising that he was the author of all my marvellous occurrences,
saw with glowing eyes events fall out according to his keenly desired
plans, and greeted the finishing of it with enthusiastic applause.”
What unspeakable thanks Goethe owed this mother, who so completely gave
herself up to the care and love of her children!
Schiller, according to the accounts of his biographers, had in his
youth no extraordinary mental qualities, though his capacity was good
and his diligence intense. “The boy,” we read, “felt that without
diligence no mastery can be won.” His education, which his strict
father most conscientiously superintended, was exceedingly solid
and thorough. His extremely rich-hearted--or, as the Germans say,
_gemüthvolle_--mother surrounded him with an atmosphere of love. She
had plainly a great share in his education. Scharffenstein, a youthful
friend of Schiller, says of her: “Her son was the image of her in
figure and physiognomy. Her dear face was very feminine and mild.
Never was there seen a more admirable, domestic, and feminine woman.”
Körner, in his biography, says of Schiller: “In many respects he was
a backward child, and certainly was not one of those who gratify the
vanity of their parents by precocious acquirements and talents. But
even in his childhood his soft heart, combined with a firm will, his
good faith, and his attachment to those who had won his love, together
with his easily roused fancy, were plainly discernible.” His remarkably
intelligent father and his warm-hearted mother supplied him with a
superior education. “He had from childhood a ruling bent for poetry;
but his father considered his own duty to be merely to tolerate his
son’s first essays, not to encourage them. He had too lofty an ideal of
art to permit himself, in a case so near to him, not to exercise due
care lest a mere inclination should be mistaken for an avocation.”
Raphael, though he lost his mother in his eighth and his father in
his eleventh year, received a good education and rounded development.
Galileo, Newton, Linnæus, Fénelon, Arago, early showed acute
understanding, and all were liberally educated. Haydn, though born in
narrow circumstances, received an exceptional and loving education. He
expressed his gratitude for it in later years, and was most strongly
attached to his mother, who had always most tenderly cared for his
well-being. Liszt was brought up with the utmost love and care. His
father early recognised his genius, and once exclaimed: “You are elect
of destiny, and will realize that ideal of art which cast a vain
glamour over my youth. In you I wish to rejuvenate and propagate my
soul.” Franz was a weakly child in body and was in need of a good deal
of parental concern, and it was prodigally bestowed. His father kept a
diary devoted to him “with the minute and anxious punctiliousness of a
tender father.” Washington’s father, dying when George was eleven years
old, had such confidence in the highly intelligent and prudent mother,
that he gave her, by his will, full control of all the property of the
children until they should come of age. This lady fulfilled every duty
of a mother with the utmost love and tenderest concern, and gave them
an excellent education. Kant said: “I shall never forget my mother, for
she planted and tended the first germs of good in me. She opened my
heart to the impressions of Nature. She awakened and expanded my ideas;
and her teachings have had an enduring and wholesome influence upon my
life.”
Heine had an admirable mother, whose only endeavour it was to transmit
to her children the excellent education that she had herself received
in her father’s house. Her favourite authors were Goethe and Rousseau.
The reading of Emile had made education rather a hobby of hers.
She herself taught the boys to read and write, and most carefully
superintended their instruction. “To her,” we read in a biography of
Heine, “he clung with an affecting child-love. He sang her praises in
charming poems, and referred to her continually in his writings with
the sincerest piety.”
A genius of whom Heine says that “he was one of the greatest German
poets, and among all our dramatists nearest approached Shakespeare,”
was ruined by vice and debauchery. This was Dietrich Grabbe, whose
father was director of a house of correction and of a pawn shop. He
suffered the gloomiest impressions in his childhood, and these were
increased by his neglected and perverse education. A biographer of the
poet accuses his mother of having led him to drink, but Heine defends
the woman from this charge, saying that it is false. Still, even
Heine, in his attempt to rehabilitate the honour of the mother of his
colleague, says: “She was a rough dame, the wife of a turnkey, and in
caressing her wolf cub, Dietrich, she perhaps sometimes scratched him
a bit with the claws of a she-wolf.” What might a genius like Grabbe
not have become if his education had been conducted by a mother like
Goethe’s?
A multiform genius, equally gifted in poetry, music, and painting, was
E. T. A. Hoffmann. His parents separated after a short and unhappy
marriage, and his mother, who with her children was invited to her
mother’s, was prevented by bad health from concerning herself with
their education. It was left to the grandmother and an uncle, and
was so conducted as to exercise in many respects a decidedly unhappy
influence upon the formation of the boy’s character. It dealt with all
that regards the formation of the intellect and the information of the
memory. He received superior instruction in the sciences and the arts.
But the mother’s influence was wanting. The formation of the character
and of the heart was neglected. The pedantic peculiarities of the uncle
served as motive to the boy’s satiric pencil and leaning toward the
bizarre. To the remonstrances which his friend Hippel addressed to him
concerning his disrespectful deportment to his relatives he replied:
“What luck have I had with my relatives? If I had had people like you
for my father and my uncle I would not behave so.” In spite of his
genius, his works show a craziness for which his perverse education is
sufficient to account. At last he gave himself over to drink, and that
not from need or anxiety, with which he had certainly been acquainted,
but just at the time when fortune smiled upon him and he had been
absolved from all sordid cares.
Schopenhauer had a mother mentally gifted indeed, but cold. In his
early youth an antagonism arose between mother and son. When he showed
her his first work--The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason--she ironically remarked: “A book for apothecaries, is it not?”
She was herself an authoress, and he replied: “My books will live
after yours have long been relegated to the lumber room.” She retorted:
“Your books will never go to the lumber room, because nobody will buy
them at all.” This want of motherly love may well have had more than a
slight influence upon the character and later life of the philosopher.
Much in his life might have shaped itself otherwise if he had been able
to look back upon a youth beautified by a mother’s love. Perhaps the
repellent coldness of his mother laid the foundation for his subsequent
disparagement of women.
Rousseau’s mother died at his birth. His father was a poor watchmaker
who could not concern himself much about the education of his son.
When the father had to flee on account of an affair of honour, the son
went into a boarding-school, where he was treated hardly and unjustly.
Later he was apprenticed to an engraver, and in that situation he
read during his leisure all the books in a circulating library. Being
ill-treated by his master, he left him, and at the age of fifteen
wandered about Savoy until he was recommended by a Catholic priest to
Madame de Warens. She was a very good-hearted but morally weak woman,
who spoiled her _protégé_ exceedingly, and soon converted him from
an adopted son into a lover. Such youthful impressions must, it is
plain, have had a very disadvantageous influence upon the character of
Rousseau. Many an absurdity of his later life is to be attributed to
his unfortunate youth. How far his bad education, or rather his total
want of education, may have acted upon the later development of the
derangement of his mind is a question not to be decided with certainty.
Byron’s parents having separated, he was educated, or rather not
educated, only by a mother of weak and overemotional character and
an old nurse. The consequence was that he developed a very unstable
character, became addicted to wild excesses, later suffered from
hallucinations; and, in short, his genius did not unfold itself at all
as it otherwise would have done.
These few examples are not offered as an inductive argument to
establish a connection between education and character, as if it were
otherwise unknown to us, as Lombroso, for example, gives lists to show
that men of genius are commonly undersized, etc. They are offered as
illustrations which, when we know what that connection is in ordinary
cases, may disabuse the mind of an unfounded notion that genius is an
exception to the general rule, and which will help us to imagine what
the early life of a genius is, and how he is _more_ and not _less_
influenced by education than another boy would be, agreeably to the
deductive arguments we have already set forth.
The circumstance that there have been men of genius (not so numerous,
perhaps, as is supposed) who, in spite of an education, either
defective or positively baleful, have worked their way to fame and
public usefulness, does not in the slightest degree conflict with our
proposition, for we can never know what degree of perfection they
might have attained with a better education. We do know that some of
those who ultimately impressed themselves upon the minds of their
own age and upon those which succeeded it, had been at one time in
danger of turning out nonentities in consequence of early influences,
and were only awakened by some fortunate chance; and, finally, in
anthropological questions we must not expect to find rules without any
exceptions whatever.
Beethoven developed the greatest musical genius, although his youth was
not cheerful and his education was very faulty. His father, himself
a musician, took care to form his son in music in a thorough manner,
especially as the son’s genius was recognisable in his childhood; but
the moral impressions which he received as a boy were not calculated to
influence happily a young heart or a character in process of formation.
The father was given to drink; and Ludwig’s young friend, Stephan von
Brenning, once saw the drunken father rescued from the police by the
son in the open street. Certainly, such things could not fail to make
their mark upon the still plastic character. Nohl says, “The reticence
and a certain defiant spirit of his youth and manhood must be referred
to such harsh experiences.”
Disadvantageous as a bad education may, even under ordinary
circumstances, be expected to be to a genius, both with respect to
his character and to his intellect, it will be still more fatal in
case he has a strongly marked fancy with but moderate gifts in other
directions. Children in whom inordinate fancy or feelings somewhat
overbalance their other faculties may, nevertheless, by the aid of
an energetic education, with continued training of their memory,
attention, will, etc., be made productive and capable men, while
without a rational education they would fall into the category of
pseudo-geniuses or fools of genius.
Thus we see the enormous importance of education--not merely school
instruction, but the impressions of the family circle upon the child
and the youth. Especially momentous for the child’s later destiny
is the mother’s part in education. Every innovation in our social
habits tending to diminish the mother’s large share in the education
of her children ought to be considered as prejudicial to the progress
of humanity. Public schools answer well enough to teach children
arithmetic and geography, but no institution can for one moment be
thought of as a substitute for the bringing up by a whole-hearted
mother. It is the natural vocation of the woman; and every wife who,
from motives of ease, pleasure, or vanity, tries to shirk that duty,
has, by an unnatural civilization, been brought to a lower moral level
than her cat or her slut, either of which, by instinct, surrenders
itself ungrudgingly to its maternal duties. Oh, mothers, take these
things to heart! Learn to recognise that no higher or nobler task is
presented to a human being than the self-forgetting and love-abounding
education of one’s own children. Nature herself sanctifies this duty,
and upon its performance the destiny of the race depends.
Before I leave this subject, let me animadvert to a phenomenon
interesting in many respects--that of the precocious child. What is a
precocious child? As I have already mentioned, the majority of great
geniuses have shown in their childhood great mental capacities, which,
according to their inborn dispositions, were specially developed in one
direction or another. A child whose capacity in a special branch is so
high that it is able to perform things which “astound the multitude”
is generally called an “infant phenomenon” or precocious child. It
is an established fact of experience that, with very few exceptions,
precocious children are found exclusively in the branch of practical
music. This fact is not so much due to the earlier development of
musical genius, for Raphael, Michel Angelo, and Thorwaldsen equally
showed in their early childhood a very uncommonly great gift for their
art. But were they able “to astound the multitude”? The performance
of a precocious child can only astound when the multitude is able to
compare the fine result with the youth of the performer. A child, be it
never so gifted, is not at the apogee of its ability; but allowances
are made for its years. The performance--unless, indeed, it be a very
incomplex result, like the answer to an arithmetical problem, or a
feat of memory--is in itself hardly to be called extraordinary even
in the most phenomenal cases. But it is the circumstance that it is
done by a child that makes it wonderful. The work of the child-poet or
child-artist, whatever its genius, when abstracted from its authorship,
will not amaze the multitude as a musical performance will do. The poem
or picture endures, and thus can be subjected to criticism irrespective
of the personality of the artist, whether the author be boy or man.
It is different with musical execution. In the concert-hall the
personality of the male or female artist exercises upon the public no
inconsiderable influence of that kind which is generally designate by
the term _suggestion_.
As I have already said, the artistic performance of a child is, in
itself considered, always slighter than that of an accomplished artist.
But to see a little seven-year-old boy seat himself at a piano before a
vast or distinguished audience and play it with his little hands, that
is what, as a natural phenomenon, not as a work of pure art, astounds
the multitude.
Opinions may differ as to whether art institutions and associations
ought to confine themselves strictly to striving after the highest pure
art, in the faith that thereby the sentiment and heart of the nation
may be ennobled, or whether they may admit, as a secondary purpose, the
bringing before the public of anthropological curiosities. For my part,
the circus rather than the concert-hall seems to me their proper place.
Kant says: “A precocious genius of ephemeral existence, like Heinecke
in Lübeck and Baratier in Halle, are departures of Nature from her
rule, curiosities for a naturalist’s cabinet. They cause astonishment
on account of their early age; but they often disappoint those who
bring them forward.” Let everybody choose for himself what class of
entertainments he prefers, and to that end I would send the curiosities
to the curiosity shops.
But there is a rather more serious, not to say solemn, side to the
public exhibition of precocities; and the psychiatrist would neglect a
duty if he failed to refer to it. Remembering what the importance of
education and childish impressions has been seen to be, let anybody
picture to himself what the life of an “infant phenomenon” is, and what
are the impressions that are made upon it. A wise education, in such a
case, would primarily be directed to avoiding the evil consequences of
vanity and of a deadening self-consciousness. But this poor victim of
the crowd and of money-getting is covered every night with medals and
decorations from shoulders to waist, and is exposed to the stupendous
plaudits of a brilliant assemblage. His childish heart needs forming;
all that is noxious should be screened from his imagination; but
instead of that, newspaper puffs and the nauseously indiscriminate
praise of society blunt his feeling and nip his nobler sentiments in
the bud. The consequence of this--bad education, as I was about to
call it, but that is not the word for it--this wicked ill-treatment,
is the destruction of the genius of almost every such child. They
are not taught that not even genius can climb the rugged steeps of
Parnassus without diligence and labour. They are told that they are
perfect, and that their performances are above criticism. But when,
at last, they have to appear, no longer in the child’s stockings and
black velvet frock, but in the man’s dress-coat, that nimbus round the
phenomenon melts away; and then it is perceived that the development
of their genius has undergone mischievous perturbations. The character
is unformed; the mental balance all out; and, in short, the wonderful
child is, after all, nothing but a fool. No empty theory is this, but
manifold experience. Such fools, who in their childhood were driven
about the world to the sound of drum and trumpet, are numerous. It is
high time that judicious men should protest against the unspeakable
outrage which vain and mercenary parents and unscrupulous impressarios,
who look upon a child of genius as nothing but an article of trade,
commit upon these precocities.
The defenders of this abuse tell us that Mozart, Beethoven, and
Mendelssohn were all infant prodigies. But what of that? If a physician
recommends that our children should eat wholesome food and breathe good
air, will you retort, “Pshaw! I know of several children that ate the
most unwholesome things, were exposed to all sorts of bad influence,
and yet they grew up all right and are marvels of rugged health; so
you see it makes no difference how children are brought up?” Besides,
Mozart and Mendelssohn were not treated like the youthful prodigies
of to-day. I have already mentioned what an intelligent father Mozart
had, and how, in spite of his son’s public appearance, in accordance
with the morals of those days, he gave him a superior education.
Mendelssohn’s teacher, old Zelter, always had it at heart to preserve
his scholar’s childlike modesty and to guard him against self-conceit.
And then, how much, after all, did these children play in public
compared with the professional tours of the precocious child of to-day?
Yet, notwithstanding the comparative infrequency of the performances,
those art journeys certainly had no happy influence either upon Mozart
or upon Beethoven. Mozart lived all his life in a highly wrought state
of the nerves, and died at the meridian of life with a fatally diseased
brain. The sad influence of the dreary youth of Beethoven upon the
development of his character has already been noticed.
We hear it said that precocious children in poor circumstances have
no other way of getting the money requisite for a rational education
than by such concert tours. Were this assertion verified, it would be
time that such a shocking state of things were put to an end. In the
“land of the Almighty Dollar,” as it is called, besides a “Society for
the Protection of Animals” there is a “Society for the Protection of
Children,” invested with certain powers by law; and not long ago, when
a precocious child had been sent over from Germany to win dollars,
the doors of the hall were closed by the authority of that society,
and, much to the disgust of the Herr Impressario, whose business was
damaged, public performances were prohibited. The wonderful child
was sent home by a philanthropist, and with the child was sent a
considerable sum of money, this being intrusted to the father, under
the condition that the child should be provided with a thorough
education and should not appear in public until he was grown up. It is
to be hoped that the time is now not far distant when the destruction
of a genius for the sake of material interests shall belong to the
barbarities overthrown by civilization.