does it mean sluggishness, apathy or phlegmatism; quite the contrary. It
does mean depth as opposed to shallowness, bigness as opposed to
littleness, and vision as opposed to spiritual myopia. It means dignity,
poise, aplomb, balance. It means that there is sufficient ballast to hold
the ship steady on its way, no matter how much sail it spreads. When we
see serenity, we are quite aware of other spiritual qualities that foster
it and lift it into view. We know that courage is one of the hidden
pillars on which it rests and that sincerity contributes to its grace and
charm. It is a vital crescent quality as staunch as the oak and as
graceful as the rainbow. It evermore stands upon a pedestal, and a host of
devotees do it homage. It is as majestic and beautiful as the iceberg but
as warm-hearted as love. It has reserve, and yet it attracts rather than
repels. A thousand influences are poured into the alembic of the spirit,
and serenity issues forth in modest splendor.
This quality of the spirit both betokens and embodies power, and power
governs the universe. Its power is not that of the storm that harries and
devastates, but rather that of the sunshine that fructifies, purifies,
chastens, and ripens. It does not rush or crash into a situation but
steals in as quietly as the dawn, without noise or bombast, and, by its
gentle influence, softens asperities and wins a smile from the face of
sorrow, or discouragement, or anger. Its presence transforms discord into
harmony, irradiates gloom, and evokes rare flowers from the murky soil of
discontent. Whatever storms may rage elsewhere and whatever darkness may
enshroud, it ever keeps its place as the center of a circle of calm and
light. It is Venus of Milo come to life, silently distilling the beauty
and splendor of living. In its presence harshness becomes gentleness,
hysteria becomes equanimity, and sound becomes silence. From its presence
vaunting and vainglory and arrogance hasten away to be with their own
kind. By its power, as of a miracle, it changes the dross into fine gold,
the grotesque into the seemly, the vulgar into the pure, the water into
wine. Into the midst of commotion and confusion it quietly moves, saying,
"Peace, be still!" and there is quiet and repose. Like the sun-crowned
summit of the mountain, it stands erect and sublime nor heeds the cloudy
tumult at its feet. In the school, the teacher who exemplifies and
typifies this quality of serenity is never less than dignified but,
withal, is never either cold or rigid. Children nestle about her in their
affections and expand in her presence as flowers open in the sunshine. She
cannot be a martinet nor, in her presence, can the children become
sycophants. Her very presence generates an atmosphere that is conducive to
healthy growth. There is that impelling force about her that draws people
to her as iron filings are drawn to the magnet. Her smile stills the
tumult of youthful exuberance and when the children look at her they gain
a comprehensive definition of a lady. Her poise steadies the children in
all the ramifications of their work, her complete mastery of herself wins
their admiration, and her complete mastery of the situation wins their
respect. They become inoculated with her spirit and make daily advances
toward the goal of serenity. Knowledge is her meat and drink and, through
the subtle alchemy of sublimation, her knowledge issues forth into wisdom.
She does not pose, for her simplicity and sincerity have no need of
artificial garnishings. Her outward mien is but the expression of her
spiritual power, and when we contemplate her we know of a truth that
education is a spiritual process.
To the teacher without serenity, the days abound in troubles. She is
nervous, peevish, querulous, and irritable, and her pupils become equally
so. She thinks of them as incorrigibles and tells them so. To her they
seem bad and she tells them so. Her animadversions reflect upon their
parents and their home life as well as themselves and she takes unction to
herself by reason of her strictures. Her spiritual ballast is unequal to
the sail she carries and her craft in consequence careens and every day
ships water of icy coldness that chills her pupils to the heart. She has
knowledge, indeed much knowledge, but she lacks wisdom, hence her
knowledge becomes weakness and not power. She has spiritual hysteria which
manifests itself in her manner, in her looks, and in her voice. Her
spiritual strength is insufficient for the load she tries to carry and her
path shows uneven and tortuous. She nags and scolds in strident tones that
ruffle and rasp the spirits of her pupils and beget in them a longing to
become whatever she is not. She is noisy where quiet is needful; she
causes disturbance where there should be peace; and she disquiets where
she should soothe. She may have had training, but she lacks education, for
her spiritual qualities show only chaos. The waters of her soul are
shallow and so are lashed into tumult by the slightest storm. She lacks
serenity.
The test of a real teacher is not whether she will be good _to_ the
children but, rather, whether she will be good _for_ the children, and
these concepts are wide apart. If our colleges and normal schools could
but gain the notion that their function is to prepare teachers who will be
good _for_ children they might find occasion to modify their courses
radically. Unless she has serenity the teacher is not good for children,
for serenity is one of the qualities which they themselves should possess
as the result of their school experience and it is not easy for them to
achieve this quality if the teacher's example and influence are adverse.
We test prospective teachers for their knowledge of this subject and that,
when, in reality, we should be trying to determine whether they will be
good for the pupils. But we have contracted the habit of thinking that
knowledge is power and so test for knowledge, thinking, futilely, that we
are testing for power. We judge of a teacher's efficacy by some marks that
examiners inscribe upon a bit of paper, "a thing laughable to gods and
men." She may be proficient in languages, sciences, and arts and still not
be good for the children by reason of the absence of spiritual qualities.
None the less, we admit her to the school as teacher when we would decline
to admit her to the hospital as nurse. We say she would not be good for
the patients in the hospital but nevertheless accept her as the teacher of
our children.
In Ephesians we read, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance," and
such an array of excellent spiritual qualities should attract the
attention of all the agencies that have to do with the preparation of
teachers. We need only to make a list of the opposites of these qualities
to be convinced that the teacher who possesses these opposites would not
be good for the children. Now serenity embodies all the foregoing
excellent qualities and, therefore, the teacher who has serenity has a
host of qualities that will make for the success and well-being of her
pupils. Again, quoting from Henderson: "My whole point is that these
spiritual qualities in a boy are infinitely more important to his present
charm and future achievement than any amount of academic training, than
the most complete knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, history,
geography, grammar, spelling, classics, and natural science. For charm and
achievement are of the Spirit. It is very clear, then, that we ought to
make these spiritual qualities the major end of all our endeavor during
those wonderful years of grace; and that we ought to allow the
intellectual development, up to fourteen years at least, to be a
by-product, valuable and welcome certainly, but not primarily sought
after. In the end we should get much the larger harvest of intellectual
power, and much the larger man."
We cannot hope to achieve the reconstructed school until our notion of
teaching and teachers has been reconstructed. When we secure teachers who
have education and not mere knowledge, we may begin to hope. We must look
to the colleges and normal schools to furnish such teachers. If they
cannot do so, our schools must plod along on the path of tradition without
hope of finding the better way. There are faint indications, however, here
and there, that the colleges and normal schools are beginning to stir in
their sleep and are becoming somewhat aware of their opportunities and
responsibilities. We shall hail with acclaim the glad day when they come
to realize that the preparation of teachers for their work is a task of
large import and goes deeper than facts, and statistics, and theories, and
knowledge. If they furnish a teacher who has the quality of serenity, we
shall all be fully alive to the fact that that quality is the luscious and
nutritious fruitage of scholarship, of wide knowledge, of much reading, of
deep meditation, and keen observation. But these elements, either singly
or in combination, are but veneer unless they strike their roots into the
spiritual nature and are thus nourished into spiritual qualities.
Excavating into serenity, we shall discover the pure gold of scholarship;
we shall find knowledge in great abundance; we shall find the spirit of
the greatest and best books; and we shall come upon the cloister in which
meditation has done its perfect work.
The machine that is run to the extreme limit of its capacity splutters,
sizzles, hisses, and quivers, and finally shakes itself into a condition
of ineffectiveness. But the machine that is run well within the limits of
its capacity is steady, noiseless, serene, effective, and durable. So with
people. The person who essays a task that is beyond his capacity is
certain to come to grief and to create no end of disturbance to himself
and others before the final catastrophe. If the steam-chest or boiler is
not equal to the task, wisdom and safety would counsel the installation of
a larger one. Here is one of the tragedies of our scheme of education. The
spirit is the power-plant of all life's operations and in this plant are
many boilers. Instead of calling more and more of these into action, we
seem intent upon repressing them and thus we reduce the capacity of the
plant as a whole. When we should be lighting or replenishing the fires
under the boilers of imagination, initiative, aspiration, and reverence,
we spend our time striving to bank or quench these fires and in playing
and dawdling with the torches of arithmetic, grammar, and history with
which we should be kindling the fires. Thus we diminish the power of the
plant while life's activities are calling for extension and enlargement.
We seem to be trying to train our pupils to work with one or but few
boilers when there are scores of them available if only we knew how to
utilize them.
Hence, it must appear that reserve-power and serenity are virtually
synonymous. The teacher who has achieved serenity never uses all the power
at her command and, in consequence, all her actions are easy, quiet, and
even. She is always stable and never mercurial or spasmodic. She
encounters steep grades, to be sure, but with ease and grace she applies a
bit more power from her abundant supply and so compasses the difficulty
without disturbing the calm. She is fully conscious of her reservoir of
power and can concentrate all her attention upon the work in hand. The
ballast in the hold keeps the mast perpendicular and the sails in position
to catch the favoring breeze. We admire and applaud the graceful ship as
it speeds along its course, giving little heed to the ballast in the hold
that gives it poise and balance. But the ballast is there, else the ship
would not be moving with such majestic mien. Nor was this ballast provided
in a day. Rather it has been accumulating through the years, and bears the
mark of college halls, of libraries, of laboratories, of the auditorium,
of the mountain, the ocean, the starry night, of the deep forest, of the
landscape, and of communion with all that is big and fine.
Socrates drinking the hemlock is a fitting and inspiring illustration of
serenity. In the presence of certain and imminent death he was far less
perturbed than many another man in the presence of a pin-prick. And his
imperturbability betokened bigness and not stolidity. While his disciples
wept about him, he could counsel them to calmness and discourse to them
upon immortality. He wept not, nor did he shudder back from the ordeal,
but calm and masterful he raised the cup to his lips and smiled as he
drank. His serenity won immortality for his name; for wherever language
may be spoken or written, the story of Socrates will be told. History will
not permit his name to be swallowed up in oblivion, not alone because he
was the victim of ignorance and prejudice but also because his serenity,
which was the offspring and proof of his wisdom, did not fail him and his
friends in the supreme test. It is not a slight matter, then, to set up
serenity as one of the goals in our school work. Nor is it a slight matter
for the teacher to show forth this quality in all her work and so inspire
her pupils to follow in her footsteps.
We hope, of course, that the boys and girls of our schools may attain
serenity so that, even in their days of youth, urged on as they are by
youthful exuberance, they may be orderly, decorous, and kindly-disposed.
We would have them polite, as a matter of course, but we would hope that
their politeness may be a part of themselves and not a mere accretion.
They will have joy of life, but so does their teacher who is possessed of
serenity. Joy is not necessarily boisterous. The strains of music are no
less music because they are mellow. We would have our young people think
soberly but not solemnly. And when all our people, young and old, reach
the goal of serenity they will extol the teachers and the schools that
showed them the way.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LIFE
Finally, we come to the chief among the goals, which is life itself. In
fact, life is the super-goal. We study manual arts, science, and language
that we may achieve the goals of integrity, imagination, aspiration, and
serenity, and these qualities we weave into the fabric of life. Upon the
spiritual qualities we weave into it, depend the texture and pattern of
this fabric and the generating and developing of these qualities and the
weaving of them into this fabric--this we call life. When we look upon a
person who is well-conditioned and whose life is well-ordered, in body, in
mind, and in spirit, we know, at once, that he possesses integrity,
initiative, a sense of responsibility, reverence, and other high qualities
that compose the person as we see him. We do not reflect upon what he
knows of history, of geography, or of music, for we are taking note of an
exemplification of life. Indeed, the presence or absence of these
qualities determines the character of the person's life. Hence it is that
life is the supreme goal of endeavor. Life is a composite and the
crown-piece of all the qualities toward which we strive by means of
arithmetic and grammar--in short, of all our activities both in school and
out.
One of our mistakes is that we confuse life and lifetime, and construe
life to mean the span of life. In this conception the unit of measurement
is so large that our concept of life evaporates into a vague
generalization. Life is too specific, too definite for that. The quality
of life may better be measured and tested in one-hour periods of duration.
When the clock strikes nine, we know that in just sixty minutes it will
strike ten. In the space of those sixty minutes we may find a
cross-section of life. In a single hour we may experience a thousand
sensations, arrive at a thousand judgments, and make a thousand responses
to things about us. In that hour we may experience joy, sorrow, love,
hate, envy, malice, sympathy, kindliness, courage, cowardice, pettiness,
magnanimity, egoism, altruism, cruelty, mercy--a list, in fact, that
reaches on almost interminably. If we only had a spiritual cyclometer
attached to us, when the clock strikes ten we should have an interesting
moment in noting the record. Only in some such way may each one of us gain
a true notion of what his own life is. The one-hour period is quite long
enough for a determination of the spiritual attitude and disposition of
the individual.
It is no small matter to achieve life, big, full, round, abounding,
pulsating life; but it is certainly well worth striving for. Some one has
defined sin as the distance between what one is and what he might have
been; and this distance measures his decline from the sphere of life to
which he had right and title. For life is a sphere, seeing that it extends
in all directions. Its limits are conterminous with the boundaries of time
and space. The feeble-minded person has life, but only in a very
restricted sphere. He eats; he drinks; he sleeps; he wanders in narrow
areas; and that is all. His thinking is weak, meager, and fitful. To him
darkness means a time for sleeping, and light a time for eating and
waiting. He produces nothing either of thought or substance, but is a
pensioner upon the thinking and substance of others. His eyesight is
strong and his hearing unimpaired; but he neither sees nor hears as normal
persons do, because his spirit is incapable of positive reactions, and his
mind too weak to give commands to his bodily organs at the behest of the
spirit. In the language of psychology, he lacks a sensory foundation by
which to react to external stimuli.
In striking contrast is the man whose sphere of life is large, whose
spirit is capable of reacting to the orient and the occident, to height
and depth, and whose mind flashes across the space from the dawn to the
sunset, and from nadir to zenith. Space is his playground, and his
companions are the stars. Such a man feels and knows more life in an hour
than his antithesis could feel and know in a century. To his spirit there
are no metes and bounds; it has freedom and strength to make excursions to
the far limits of space and time. Life comes to him from a thousand
sources and in a thousand ways because he is able to go out to meet it.
There has been developed in him a sensory foundation by which he can react
to every influence the universe affords, to light and shadow, to joy and
sorrow, to the near and the far, to the then and the now, to the lowly and
the sublime, and to the finite and the Infinite. He has a big spirit,
which is first in command; he has a strong, active mind, which is second
in command; and he has a loyal company of bodily organs that are able and
willing to obey and execute commands.
To such a man we apply all the epithets of compliment and commendation
which the language yields and cite him as an exemplification of life at
high tide, of life in its supreme fullness and splendor. The knowledge of
the world comes to his doors to do his bidding; before him the arts and
sciences make their obeisance; and wisdom is his pillar of cloud by day
and his pillar of fire by night. Therefore we call him educated; we call
him a man of culture; we call him a gentleman; and all because he has
achieved life in abundant measure. Having imagination, he is able to peer
into the future, anticipate world movements, and visualize the paths on
which progress will travel. Having initiative as his badge of leadership,
he is able to rally hosts of men to his standard to execute his behests
for civic, national, and world betterment. Having aspiration, he obeys the
divine urge within him and moves onward and upward, eager to plant the
flag of progress upon the summit that others may see and be stimulated to
renewed hope and courage.
And he has integrity, for he is a real man. He has wholeness,
completeness, soundness, and roundness. He is an integer and never counts
for less than one in any relation of life. He cannot be a mere cipher, for
he is dynamic. He rings true at every impact of life, is free from dross
and veneer, and is genuine through and through. There was arithmetic, back
along the line somewhere, but it has been absorbed in the big quality
which it helped to generate and develop. And it is better so. For if he
were now solving decimals and square root he would be but a cog and not
the great wheel itself. He has grown beyond his arithmetic as he has grown
beyond his boyhood warts and freckles, for the larger life has absorbed
them. Yet he feels no disdain either for freckles or arithmetic, but
regards them as gracious incidents of youth and growth. He cannot read his
Latin as he once could, but he does not grieve; for he knows it has not
been lost but, in changed form, is enshrined in the heart of integrity.
Again, he has the qualities of thoroughness, concentration, a sense of
responsibility, loyalty, and serenity. He is big enough, and true enough
both to himself and others, to pursue a straight and steady course. To
him, life is a boon, a privilege, an investment, an opportunity, a
responsibility, and, therefore, a gift too precious to be squandered or
frivoled away. To him, hours are of fine gold and should be seized that
they may be fused and fashioned into a statue of beauty. Being loyal to
this conception, he moves on from achievement to achievement nor stops to
note that fragrant flowers of blessing and benediction are springing forth
luxuriantly in his path. His spirit is big with rightness, his brain is
clear, his conscience is clean, his eyes look upward, his words are
sincere, his thoughts are lofty, his purposes are true, and his acts
distill blessings. He is no mere figment of fancy, but rather a noble
reality whose prototype may be found on the bench, in the forum, in the
study, in the sanctum, in the school and the college, in the factory, on
the farm, and in the busy mart.
And, withal, he is a success as a human being. His sincerity is proverbial
in all things, both great and small. In him there is nothing of the
mystic, the hermit, or the sybarite. He has great joy of life, and this
joy is true, honest, and real, and never simulated. He drinks in life at
every pore, and gives forth life that invigorates and inspires whomsoever
it touches. His laugh is the expression of his wholesome nature; his words
are jewels of discrimination; his every sentence bears a helpful message;
his fine sense of humor mellows and illumines every situation; and his
face always shows forth the light within. Children find delight in his
society, and the exuberant vitality of his nature wins for him the
friendship of all living creatures. Birds seem to sing for him, and
flowers to exhale their odors for his delight. For the influences of
birds, flowers, streams, trees, meadows, and mountains are enmeshed in his
life. Nature reveals her secrets to him and gives to him of her treasures
because he goes out to meet her. Because he smiles at nature she smiles
back at him, and the union of their smiles gives joy to those who see.
Moreover, he is a product of the reconstructed school, for this school
does already exist, though in conspicuous isolation. But the oasis is
accentuated by its isolation in the desert which spreads about it and is
the more inviting by contrast. When, as a child, he entered school, the
teacher, who was in advance of her time in her conception of the true
function of the school, made a close and sympathetic appraisement of his
aptitudes, his native dispositions, his daily environment, and the bent of
his inherent spiritual qualities. First of all, she won his confidence.
Thus he found freedom, ease, and pleasure in her presence. Thus, too,
there ensued unconscious self-revelation and nothing in his life evaded
her kindly scrutiny. He opened his mind to her frankly and fully, and
never after did she permit the closing of the door. Only so could she
become his teacher.