the contagion of sentiments, it is yet often possible to trace the
spread of an emotion, good or bad, from one individual of a family or
village to all the other members or inhabitants. It suffices for some
spiteful boy or idle girl to call a miserable old woman a witch, or to
express hatred of some foreigner or harmless eccentric, to set afloat
prejudices which end in something approaching to persecution of the
victims, who may be thankful they did not live two hundred years ago,
when, instead of being boycotted, they would have been burned. A child
in a school or large household who has the misfortune to be lame or
ugly, or to exhibit any peculiarity physical or mental, may, without any
fault on its side, become obnoxious to the blind dislike of a stupid
servant or jealous step-mother, and then—the contagion spreading and
intensifying as it extends—to the common hatred of the little
community,—a hatred justifying itself by the sullenness or deceptions to
which the poor victim at last is driven. Even domestic animals suffer
from this kind of contagious dislike, and benefit on the other hand by
contagious admiration and fondness.[9] “Give a dog a bad name and hang
him” is true in more senses than one.
We need not pursue this part of the subject further. Every day’s
experience may supply fresh illustrations of the immense influence of
contagion in the development of all human emotions. Nor is it by any
means to be set down as a weakness peculiar to or characteristic of a
feeble mind to be blindly susceptible of such contagion. Even the
strongest wills are bent and warped by the winds of other men’s
passions, persistently blowing in given directions. Original minds,
gifted with what the French call _l’esprit primesautier_, are perhaps,
indeed, affected rather more than less than commonplace people by the
emotions of those around them, because their larger natures are more
open to the sympathetic shock. Like ships with all sails set, they are
caught by every breeze. It is a question of degree how _much_ each man
receives of influence from his neighbors; but (to use the new medical
barbarism) we are never “immune” altogether from the contagion.
We may now approach our proper subject of the Education of the Emotions,
carrying with us the important fact that no means are so efficacious in
promoting good ones as the wise employment of the great agency of
Contagion; and, further, that this contagion works only by exhibiting
the genuine emotion to the person we desire to influence. Only by being
brave can we inspire courage. Only by reverencing holy things can we
communicate veneration. Only by being tender and loving can we move
other hearts to pity and affection.
Let us glance over the variety of circumstances wherein great good might
be effected by systematic attention to the natural laws of the
development of the emotions. We may begin by considering those connected
with the education of the young.
In the first place, parents duly impressed with the importance of the
subject would carefully suppress, or at least conceal, such of their own
emotions as they would regret to see caught up by their children. At
present, numberless sufficiently conscientious fathers and mothers, who
would be horrified at the suggestion of placing books teaching bad
lessons in the hands of their sons and daughters, yet carelessly allow
them to witness (and of course to receive the contagion of) all manner
of angry, envious, cowardly, and scornful emotions, just as they chance
to be called out in themselves. It would be to revolutionize many homes
to induce parents to revise their own sentiments, with a view to
deciding which they should communicate to their children. In one way in
particular, the result of such self-questioning might be startling.
Every good father desires his son to respect his mother, and would be
sorry to teach him only the half of the Fifth Commandment—_in words_.
Yet how do scores of such well-meaning men set about conveying the
sentiment of reverence which they recognize will be invaluable to their
sons? They treat those same mothers, in the presence of those same sons,
with such rudeness, dismiss their opinions with such levity, and perhaps
exhibit such actual contempt for their wishes that it is not in nature
but that the boy will receive a lesson of disrespect. His father’s
feelings, backed up as they are by the disabilities under which the
Constitution places women, can scarcely fail to impress the young mind
with that contempt for women in general, and for his mother in
particular, which is precisely the reverse of chivalry and filial piety.
Almost as important as the contagion of parental emotion is that of the
sentiments of Teachers; yet on this subject nobody seems to think it
needful even to institute inquiries. So far as I can learn, the sole
question asked nowadays when a professor is to be appointed to a Chair
at the Universities is, “Whether he be the man among the candidates who
knows most [or rather who _has the reputation_ of knowing most] of the
subject which he proposes to teach?” This point being ascertained, and
nothing serious alleged against his moral conduct, the fortunate
gentleman receives his appointment as a matter of course. Even electors
who personally detest the notorious opinions of the professor on
religion or politics acquiesce cheerfully in the choice; apparently
satisfied that he will carve out to his students the particular pound of
knowledge he is bound to give them, and not a drop of blood besides. The
same principle, I presume (I have little information on the subject),
prevails in schools generally, as it does in private education. A
professor or governess is engaged to instruct boys or girls, let us say
in Latin, History, or Physiology, and it is assumed that he or she will
act precisely like a teaching machine for that particular subject, and
never step beyond its borders. A little common sense would dissipate
this idle presumption,—supposing it to be really entertained, and that
the mania for cramming sheer knowledge down the throats of the young
does not make their elders wilfully disregardful of the moral poison
which may filter along with it. Every human being, as I have said,
exercises some influence over the emotions of his neighbor; but that of
a Teacher, especially if he be a brilliant one, over his students, often
amounts to a contagion of enthusiasm throughout the class. His
admirations are adored, the objects of his sneers despised, and every
opinion he enunciates is an oracle. And it is these professors and
teachers, forsooth, whose opinions on ethics, theology, and politics it
is not thought worth while to ascertain before installing them in their
Chairs to become the guides of the young men and women who are the hope
of the nation!
It does not require any direct, or even indirect, inculcation of
_opinion_ on the teacher’s part to do mischief. It is the contagion of
his emotions which is to be feared, if those emotions be base or bad.
Let him teach History and betray his enthusiasm for selfish and
sanguinary conquerors, or justify assassins and anarchists, or
jest—Gibbon fashion—at martyrs and heroes, will he not communicate those
base sentiments to his young audience? Or let him teach Science, and
convey to every student’s mind that deification of mere knowledge, that
insolent sense of superiority in the possession of it, that remorseless
determination to pursue it regardless of every moral restraint, which is
too often the “note” of modern scientism, will the instruction he
affords to his students’ brains counterbalance the harm he will do to
their hearts?
And, on the other hand, what a splendid vantage-ground for the
dissemination not merely of knowledge, but of elevated feelings, is that
of a Teacher! Merely in teaching a dead or modern language, a
fine-natured man communicates his own glowing feelings respecting the
masterpieces of national literature which it is his duty to expound.
The last point we need notice as regards the contagion of emotions among
the young is the subject of Companions. Here again, as in the case of
respect for mothers, there is great unanimity in theory. Every one
admits that bad companions are ruinous for boys or girls. But, when it
comes to taking precautions against the herding of innocent and
well-nurtured children with others who have been familiar with vice, I
see little trace of the anxious care and discrimination which ought to
prevail. Nay, in the case of the children of the poor, it seems to me
the law is often wickedly applied to compel good parents to send them,
against their own will and convictions, to sit beside companions who
have come straight to school out of slums of filth, moral and physical.
I have known Americans argue that it is right for children of all
classes to associate together, so that the well-trained may communicate
good ideas to the ill-trained. The reasoning appears to be on a par with
a proposal to send healthy people to sleep in a cholera hospital. But,
while we allow ourselves to be terrified beyond bounds by alarms about
the infection of bodily disease, we take hardly any precautions against
the more dreadful, and quite as real, infection of moral corruption.[10]
The general sentiment of boys and youths in the great public schools and
colleges of England—thanks to the high-minded Masters who have been at
their head—is, on the whole, good and honorable. It may be taken for
granted that a boy from Harrow, Eton, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, or
Uppingham, and _a fortiori_ a man from Oxford or Cambridge, will despise
lying and cowardice and admire fair play and justice. How grand a
foundation for national character has thus been laid! What a debt do we
owe alike to the Masters and the “Tom Browns” who have communicated the
contagion of such noble emotions! In Continental _lycées_ and academies,
public opinion among the boys is, by all accounts, wofully inferior to
that which is current in our great schools. There has never been an
Arnold in a French Rugby.
As regards girls, their doubly emotional natures make it a matter of
moral life and death that their companions (of whose emotions they are
perfectly certain to experience the contagion) should be pure and
honorable-minded. It is most encouraging to every woman who reads Mrs.
Pfeiffer’s masterly new book, “Women and Work,” to see the rising
generation of girls displaying such splendid abilities and zeal for
instruction, and—as Mrs. Pfeiffer amply proves—without paying for it in
loss of bodily vigor. Fain would I see the “blessed Damozels,” who are
still standing behind the golden bars of noble homes, all flocking to
the new colleges for women, as their brothers do to Christchurch and
Trinity, there to imbibe parallel sentiments of truthfulness and
_pluck_, more precious than Greek, Latin, or mathematics!
Leaving now the subject of the Education of the Emotions of the Young,
by parents, teachers, and companions, I proceed to speak of the general
education of the emotions of the community by public and private
instrumentality,—a wide field, over which we can only glance. What
machinery is disposable to cultivate the better and discourage the lower
emotions, either by the exhibition of the direct natural stimulus to the
former and withdrawal of it in the latter cases, or by the aid of
contagion?
In the grand matter of Legislation I do not know that there is much more
to be done than has already been achieved by the abolition of those
public punishments of criminals—hanging, drawing and quartering,
flogging at the cart’s tail, and the pillory—which must have been
frightfully prolific of cruel passions in the spectators. To have taken
part in such executions, _e.g._ in the old stonings to death, in the
burning of witches and heretics, or in the minor but yet barbarous and
cowardly pelting of the helpless wretches in the pillory, must have been
an apprenticeship worthy of a Red Indian. Even to have been a passive
spectator of a Newgate execution in later years, amid the yelling crowd,
must have been excessively demoralizing, and in fact was at last
recognized by the Legislature to be so, instead of a wholesome warning.
It is a cause for rejoicing that there is an end of this kind of
contagious emotion in England, except in the case of experiments on
animals, of which the Act of 1876 sanctions the exhibition to classes
under special certificates which require the subjects to be fully
anæsthetized. On this point the warning of the late lamented Professor
Rolleston ought, I think, to have sufficed. He told the Royal
Commission: “The sight of a living, bleeding, and quivering organism
most undoubtedly does act in a particular way upon what Dr. Carpenter
calls the emotiono-motor nature in us.... When men are massed together,
the emotiono-motor nature is more responsive, it becomes more sensitive
to impression than it does at other times, and that of course bears very
greatly on the question of interference with vivisections before masses”
(_Minutes_, 1287[11]). The time will come when it will be looked upon as
a monstrous inconsistency that the spectacle of the execution of
murderers should be shut off from the _adult population on account of
its recognized ill effects in fostering contagious cruelty_, and, at the
same time, as many as nineteen certificates should be issued in one year
by the Home Office, specially authorizing the mutilation of harmless
animals _before classes of young men and women_.
Majestic public functions, coronations, thanksgivings, state entries
into great cities, and funerals of distinguished men afford admirable
machinery for the communication of noble emotions through the masses. It
was worth the cost and trouble of last year’s Jubilee ten times over to
have sent through so many brains and hearts the thrill of sympathy which
followed the Queen to the old throne of her fathers, while the kings of
the earth stood around her as witnesses that she had kept the oath to
her people, sworn there fifty years before. For one day England and all
her vast colonies beat with one heart, and the contagion of loyal
emotion, love, reverence, pride, and pity, for woman, empress, mother,
widow, ran round the globe. Sad was it (as many must have remembered)
that he who would have found the true words to give utterance to the
sentiment in the heaving breast of the nation, he whose proud duty it
would have been to welcome the Queen to his own Abbey, was lying on that
day silent beneath its pavement.
Beyond Legislation and Public Functions, the largest influence which
sways the emotions of all educated people is undoubtedly Literature. The
power of Books to awaken the most vivid feelings is a phenomenon at
which savages may well wonder. The magic which enables both the living
and the long departed to move us to the depths of our being by the aid
only of a few marks on sheets of paper is a never-ending miracle. It
were vain to attempt to do any justice to the subject, or show how the
contagion of piety, patriotism, enthusiasm for justice and truth, and
sympathy with other nations and other classes than our own, is borne to
us in the pages of the poets and historians and novelists of the world.
Pitiful it is to think how narrow must be the scope of the emotions of
any man whose breast has never dilated nor his eyes flashed over the
grandeur of the Book of Job, over Dante or Shakspere, and whose heart
has never been warmed and his sympathies extended, backwards through
time and around him in space, by Walter Scott, and Defoe, and Dickens,
and George Eliot. Alas that we must add that Literature can not only
kindle the noblest emotions, but also light up baleful fires, of the
basest and most sensual,—to look for which we have not now even to cross
the Channel! M. Zola has been translated into English.
After Literature I presume that the Stage is the greatest public agency
for the promotion of fine emotions, and it is to the honor of human
nature that it is found (at least in our country) to be most popular
when it fulfils its office best, and calls out sympathy for generous and
heroic actions. When the Roman audience rose _en masse_ to applaud the
line of Terence which first proclaimed the brotherhood of man,—“Homo
sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto,”—the highest mission of the Drama
was fulfilled. Of course no one desires the string of high emotion to be
exclusively or perpetually harped upon; and for my own part I think that
the mere production of the emotion of harmless merriment is one of the
greatest boons of the stage. The contagion of laughter, in a theatre or
out of it, is an altogether wholesome and beneficent thing. How it
unseats black Care from our backs! How it carries away, as on a fresh
spring breeze, a whole swarm of buzzing worries and grievances! How it
warms our hearts for ever after to the people with whom we have once
shared a good honest _fou rire_! “Behold how good and how pleasant a
thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,” and (with all
respect let us add) in hilarity! A good joke partaken with a man is like
the Arab’s salt. Our common emotion of humorous pleasure is a bond
between us which we would not thereafter lightly break.
The education of the emotions of actors and actresses, apart from that
which they afford to the emotions of the public, is a very curious
subject of consideration. Great part of the training of an actor
consists in learning to give the uttermost possible external expression
to those emotions which it is the task of other people to reduce to a
vanishing point. Undoubtedly (as one of the most gifted of the
profession has remarked), the “habit of representing fictitious feeling
tends to produce a superficial sensibility, and an exaggerated mode of
expressing the same.” But it may be questioned whether this extreme be
worse than the opposite, wherein the expression of the emotions is so
effectually repressed that the feelings themselves die out for want of
air and exercise,—a consummation not unknown in the reposeful “caste of
Vere de Vere.”
Besides Literature and the Stage, Music no doubt is a most marvellous
agency for calling out Emotion. It is, in fact, the Art of Emotion. The
musician plays with the strings of the human heart while he touches
those of his instrument. Since Collins wrote his “Ode to the Passions”
and Pope his “Ode on Saint Cecilia’s Day,” there is no need to describe
how every emotion known to man may be brought out by music. Something
may well be hoped for a generation which, rejecting the more trivial and
sensuous music of Italy, finds delight in the exalted play of the
emotions which follows the wands of Bach and Beethoven and Wagner. The
efforts now made to offer music at once cheap and good to as many of the
working classes as can be found to enjoy it is perhaps the most direct
way conceivable of fostering their best emotions.
The Beauty of Nature and of Art are also powerful levers of the higher
emotions, which it becomes us to use for the benefit of our fellows
whenever it is practicable to do so.
But, while these varied engines are at work to stir beneficently the
emotions of the masses, there are on the other hand certain agencies in
full play amongst us which have, I fear, a totally different effect;
which, in fact, can only tend to deaden, if not destroy, the most
precious of emotions, those of family affection. I do not know that the
question has ever been faced: What are the _moral_ effects of our
enormous Hospitals? From the side of the bodily interests of the
patients, they may be wholly advantageous.[12] But as regards the sacred
institutions of the Family, on which society itself is based, I ask
what, except evil, can result from the habitual separation of relatives
the moment that illness makes a claim for tenderness and care?
It is the law of human nature that the sentiment of sympathy should be
drawn forth by personal service to the suffering; and feelings of
gratitude and affection by the receipt of such personal service. In
comparison of these sources of emotion, those which act in times of
prosperity are weak and poor. If we subtract in imagination from our own
affections those which have come to us either through nursing or being
nursed in sickness and danger, the residue will represent all which we
leave within reach of the million. Many of us can remember quarrels
which have been reconciled, unkindnesses atoned for, and bonds of sacred
union in faith and eternal hope linked beside beds of pain when death
seemed standing at the door. These things form some of the highest
educational influences which Providence brings to bear on the human
spirit, and out of them arise the sweetest affections, the warmest
gratitude, the most vivid sense of a common nearness to God and the
Immortal Life.
And of all this the entire working class of the nation is systematically
deprived! Formerly it was only in cases of extreme poverty, where the
crowded lodging was an altogether unfit place to nurse the sufferer,
that recourse was had to the public Hospitals. Now it has become the
invariable practice the moment that illness, even of non-infectious
kind, declares itself, to send straight away to the hospital artisans,
small tradesmen, and farmers from their own comfortable abodes, servants
from the large and airy houses where they have labored faithfully, and
even children from their mothers’ arms. It is not a mere matter of
conjecture that such a custom must do harm and weaken the sense of
family obligation. It is a fact that it has done so already, and is
doing so more every day. Sons and daughters place their blind and
palsied parents in asylums; wives send their husbands in a decline to
Brompton Hospital; and it has become a surprising piece of filial
devotion if a daughter remain at home to take care of a bed-ridden
mother, even when her means fully permit of such sacrifice of time. What
deadly injury is all this to the hearts of men, women, and children!
Of course Hospitals have their important uses. No one denies it. Some
cases of disease and some degrees of poverty require such institutions.
But this does not justify the monstrous over-use of them now in vogue.
Even for the class whose homes are too crowded to admit of nursing being
properly or safely done in them, I cannot but think that small Cottage
Hospitals, where the wife or mother or daughter would be free to perform
her natural duties by the bedside, and where she would be shown how best
to perform them, would be infinitely preferable for every reason, moral
and physical, to our present Palaces of Pain. Excellent also in all ways
will be the plan of Nurses provided for the poor in their own homes by
the Queen’s wise gift of the balance of her Women’s Jubilee Fund. The
secret of the excessive resort to Hospitals is of course the
encouragement to patients given by the medical schools attached to them,
for the sake of obtaining a large supply of “clinical material.”
Lastly, we come to speak of the Education of the Religious Emotions. We
have already referred to the outbursts of contagious enthusiasm in the
Crusades and Revivals. It remains to say a few words respecting the
various sources of religious emotion, at first and second hand.