Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School Part 12

The time will come, I confidently believe, when all religionists of whatever denomination will recognize that the favorite doctrines and formalities which distinguish them from each other are a mere superficial crust of that true spiritual life which is to be lived when the grown-up shall all become as little children, who feel that,

"In their work and in their play, G.o.d is with them all the day."

In speaking of the ceremonies of the Temple worship, which Moses made symbolical of all the virtues of life, moral and religious, but which in Paul's day had fallen into such a _mere_ ritual that this great Apostle said that the _Holy Ghost was not bodily exercise_, but a hopeful, faithful _charity of thought_, _feeling_, _and deed_; and this is what children can be guided into from the beginning, provided the kindergartner knows how to converse and play _with_ them instead of talking to them and coercing them _ever so kindly_ into acting out _her_ will. The play of childhood is the most genuine and intense life that is lived, body, heart, and will _conspiring_ entirely; and it is by respecting the child's _will_ and _heart_ that you really help instead of _hindering_ this unification of his threefold nature, which corresponds to the Trinity of the Supreme Being and prevents _that_ from becoming a bewildering tritheism in his conception.

A child cannot be _just_ unless he is _loving_, nor attain the freedom of moral dignity unless he a.s.serts himself; and there is no way to nurture this self-respect except to express respect to him, by being as courteous to him as you are to any adult, always asking him to explain himself and his own motives, when he seems to be in the wrong, before you condemn him.

I think I have gained some of the deepest insights I have ever had into _Divine Truth_, by discovering what was the motive thought of some child, who did what seemed inexplicable, till he told me, or I had divined, his secret reason.

It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their secret, as those know who have seen some maiden kindergartners talk _with_ their pupils in the opening exercises; but those who are not mothers will always do well to observe carefully those who are. On the other hand, mothers have to guard themselves against exaggerating their own children's natures _comparatively_. I have known some of the best mothers in the world _do that_, so as to be practically of bad influence over children not their own.

Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners should therefore none the less study Frbel's science carefully and humbly.

_All_ children are alike in having the _threefold nature_. I wish I had time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences that have come under my observation, in which the respectful, genial kindergartner has a.s.sisted in some moral development, whose occasion was very trivial to the superficial observer.

Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces can be unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which is the moral gymnasium of mankind.

This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." But the nature, which is the image of the Divine Nature, cannot be _mechanically_, but must be morally and spiritually, trained; that is, addressed and treated as free agency.

The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no less than to his equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you I do homage." This is one of the gleams of light from the lost Paradise in which man was created, and to which we hope the kindergarten is to more than restore the race, when it shall have become the universally applied principle of culture for human beings. (See Appendix, Note F.)

FOOTNOTES:

[11] See George Macdonald's _Vicar's Daughter_.

[12] This unique book was the text-book Frbel used in his training-school. Its profound meaning, and how it points to the divine philosophy of the instinctive play, that is the first phenomenon of human life with mother and child, some of you have heard Miss Blow and Miss Fisher luminously explain in a course of lectures much longer than mine, and which I hope they may be persuaded to publish in book form.

GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY.

SPIRITUALITY.

WE speak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call children living books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed in educating them (which is putting them into a harmonious activity of all their powers), without knowledge, such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these "harps of a thousand strings."

This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a discrimination of their individualities; though observation of these will be made by a consummate kindergartner; it is a knowledge of what is universal in children, essential to the const.i.tution of human beings.

Frbel never wrote out, in systematic form, the psychology which underlies and gives the rational ground to all the details of his method. But there are pregnant sentences in all his writings, and in his sayings handed down by tradition, which give such insights, that it can be divined with some completeness.

We propose to give such glimpses as occur to us from time to time--not always in our own words, but as often as we can in Frbel's, and also in the words of other thinkers, whose guesses at this kind of truth light up their writings on many subjects.

We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact; there is, in the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-existent to all impressions made by the universe, and consequently to all operations of the understanding--perceiving, comparing, judging--for these are intentional acts of the pre-existent soul breathed into his body and bidden to "have dominion."--_Genesis 1._

What is this pre-existent soul, this mysterious depth of personality?

Washington Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art, has finely said: "Man does not live by science; he feels, acts, and judges right in a thousand things, without the consciousness of any rule by which he so feels, acts, and judges. Happily for him, he has a surer guide than human science in that _unknown power within him_, without which he had been without any knowledge." Again, he speaks of "those intuitive powers, which are above and beyond both the understanding and the senses; which, nevertheless, are so far from precluding knowledge, as, on the contrary, to require--as their effective condition--the widest intimacy with things external, without which their very existence must remain unknown."

He does not, however, merely a.s.sert this pre-existence of the soul to the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of it that we all can appreciate. "Suppose," he says, "we a.n.a.lyze a certain combination of sounds and colors, so as to ascertain the exact relative qualities of the one, and the collocation of the other, and then compare them, what possible resemblance can the understanding perceive between these sounds and colors? And yet a something within us responds to both--a _similar emotion_. And so it is with a thousand things, nay, with myriads of objects, that have no other affinity but with that mysterious harmony, which began with our being, which slept with our infancy, and which their presence only seems to have awakened. If we cannot go back to our own childhood, we may see its ill.u.s.tration in those about us who are now in that unsophisticated state. Look at them in the fields, among the birds and flowers; their happy faces speak the harmony within them; the divine instrument which these objects have touched, gives them a joy, which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh consciousness, can know, yet what do children _understand_ of the theory of colors, or musical quant.i.ties?"

That this mysterious power, this feeling soul, is the _human_ characteristic, is suggested in another paragraph of these lectures.

"What, for instance, can we suppose to be the effect of the purple haze of a summer sunset on the cows or sheep, or even on the more delicate inhabitants of the air? From what we know of their habits, we cannot suppose more than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature?

But how is it with the man, whom we shall suppose an object in the same scene, stretched on the same bank with the ruminating cattle, and basking in the same light that flickers from the skimming birds? Does he feel nothing more than the genial warmth?"--Vol. I. p. 84.

This feeling of beauty, this power which appreciates harmony, this creative unity, in fine, this aesthetic soul, distinct from and above the understanding (which certain philosophers seem to think is all of man, over and above his body), is not all of the soul,--but the moral and even merely social sentiment has the same pre-existence. Allston bears witness to this also. He says: "With respect to Truth and Goodness, whose pre-existent ideas, being living const.i.tuents of an immortal spirit, need but the slightest breath of some _outward condition_ of the true and good--a simple problem or a kind act--to awaken them, as it were, from their unconscious sleep.... We may venture to a.s.sert that no philosopher, however ingenious, could communicate to a child the abstract idea of Right, had the child nothing beyond or above the understanding. He might, indeed, be taught, like inferior animals,--a dog, for instance,--that if he took certain forbidden things, he would be punished, and thus do right through _fear_. Still he would desire the forbidden thing belonging to another, nor could he conceive why he should not appropriate to himself--and thus allay his appet.i.te--what was another's, could he do so undetected; nor attain to any higher notion of Right than that of the strongest. But the child _has_ something higher than the mere power of apprehending consequences (external?). The simplest exposition, whether of right or wrong, is instantly responded to by something within him, which, thus awakened, becomes to him a living voice, and the good and the true must thenceforth answer its call. We do not say that these ideas of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness will, strictly speaking, always act. Though indestructible, they may be banished for a time by the perverted Will, and mockeries of the brain, like the fume-born phantoms from the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, may take their places and a.s.sume their functions. We have examples of this in every age, and perhaps in none more startling than the present. But we mean only that they cannot be (absolutely?) forgotten; nay, they are but too often recalled with unwelcome distinctness....

"From the dim present, then, we would appeal to that fresher time, ere the young spirit had shrunk from the overbearing pride of the (vitiated?) understanding, and confidently ask, if the emotions we then felt from the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, did not seem, in some way, to refer to a common origin? And we would also ask, if it was frequent that the influence from one was singly felt? if it did not rather bring with it, however remotely, a sense of something--though widely differing,--yet still akin to it? when we have basked in the beauty of a summer sunset, was there nothing in the sky, that spoke to the soul of Truth and Goodness? And when the opening intellect first received the truth of the great law of gravitation, and felt itself mounting through the profound of s.p.a.ce, to travel with the planets in their unerring rounds,--did never then the kindred ideas of Goodness and Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled music (not fabled to the soul), which led you on as one entranced? And again, when, in the pa.s.sive quiet of your moral nature, so predisposed, in youth, to all things genial, you have looked around on this marvellous, ever-teeming earth, ever teeming alike for mind and body, and have felt upon you the flow, as from ten thousand streams of innocent enjoyment, did you not then almost hear them shout in confluence, and almost see them gushing upwards, as if they would prove their _unity_ in one harmonious fountain?"

It is of the last consequence that the kindergartner should take into her mind that this aesthetic soul exists in children as a primary fact; for, unless she believes in it, she will not respect it, and take advantage of it in what she does for them. It is to be respected and brought out into the understanding of children, by means of the beautiful things which she leads them to do and make, and with which she surrounds them; for, as Allston says, this consciousness "requires as its effective condition, the widest intimacy with things external." When children are continually in squalid surroundings, these seem at length to strike in and paralyze the spontaneous action of the aesthetic being, who is pre-existent to consciousness of the power which compares and judges and makes up a theory of colors. And, as has been shown, this feeling of beauty, this power of appreciating harmony and unity, this aesthetic nature, distinct from and above the understanding, which some people idly think to be all of man beside his body, is not all of the soul, for the moral sentiment has the same pre-existence.

We have brought together these paragraphs taken from Allston's lectures on Art, for the consideration of practical kindergartners, all the more confidently, because they were not written as theory of education, but were parts of a practical inquiry after the standard of judgment for pictorial and plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He sought to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate science,--for science must always be inadequate, as Newton so forcibly expressed, when he defined it "gathering a few pebbles on the sh.o.r.es of the infinite ocean of truth." The object of the lecturer was what the kindergartner's first object should be,--to awaken the self-respect of the eternal soul within us all, making the life of our individuality--our personality--which, in its mysterious depth and independent pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the image of the Divine Personality, whose spoken word is the material universe, but clothed in flesh becomes MAN. It is no part of the kindergartner's duty to give--she can only awaken--the feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and conscience. She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that the child shall do, thereby a.s.sisting him to form his own understanding so that his bodily organization may be properly developed; to let in upon his soul _nature_ in its beauteous forms and order, and his fellow-creatures, in their legitimate claims upon him. Then he shall come forth from the sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive consciousness of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this marrying of finite thought to infinite love, is Frbel's Education; and cannot be accomplished, unless the kindergartner clearly sees what G.o.d has done for the child absolutely, and what for an ineffable purpose,--most gracious to the human race,--He has left to be done by human providence, whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some other fellow-creature.

It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a child is regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon, or as a living power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be educated by truth.

UNDERSTANDING.

WE have spoken of the evidences of the aesthetic being found in the mysterious depths of human personality, pre-existent to the individual understanding (which is a growth in time); and that, without there were this aesthetic being, underlying all _individual_ consciousness, there would be no standard of human virtue or art.

This aesthetic person has also (previous to the development of the understanding, which makes the synthesis of himself and nature) an impulsive force, instinct with the desire to change his conditions. Man does not appear in the world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and suffering; but as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an effect either orderly or disorderly.

The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a measure personal force. All material forces are uniform and necessary and correlative in their action, which is impressed upon them from without themselves. Man alone is self-active, and may clash with the other forces to his own pain, and he will often do so, until by knowledge of them he can harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumentality to satisfy his aesthetic nature. We call this self-activity of man, which is in such vital union with his sensibility, the human will, and it makes the personal life of every one to learn this self-activity of his, in its differences from and relations to all other forces, as he can only do perfectly by keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social relation with other aesthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds himself in these relations with fellow-beings who have more or less of the knowledge he has not; and some of them have all the responsibility of his actions until he has begun to know himself in discrimination from the material universe and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a fulcrum for his own effective action among them. The one central unity whose aesthetic being and will are inclusive of himself and fellow-beings as subject, on the one hand, and of the material universe as object, on the other, is G.o.d.

The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain because he is finite and not omnipotent. G.o.d is the omnipotent maker of the material universe, but man is not absolutely made; he is a cause, that is, _created to make_, if we may credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of creation is the most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be surpa.s.sed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a correspondent poem, with G.o.d for its theme instead of man and nature.

It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance at least, the fully developed man, that this hymn of the Creator was possible. G.o.d's word (revelation of himself) was in the world, embodied in the things made from the beginning; but until it was embodied in a man, free to will, it was truth in the form of law only (_regulative_), not yet in the completer form of love (_creative_). In short, before St. John could sing that divine song, he must have seen G.o.d in a man, full of grace and truth, dwelling among men as a fellow-man, and overflowing with a power at once sympathetic and causal.

G.o.d created man, male and female (that is, giving and receiving equally), to be keepers of each other, and to educate each other. They may tempt and fail each other by presumption as Eve, and want of self-respect as Adam, are represented to have done, at the beginning; or may save and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary historically did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspiring all who know him, to educate and redeem each other.

In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it is indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which is a primeval fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering and enjoyment. The educator ought to embody G.o.d in a measure, and treat the will of the child that is to be educated, on the same grand system of respecting individual freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition, awaken the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man-blessing power.

This is the _rationale_ of Frbel's method of government. He a.s.sumes that the child is--not to be made by education a sensibility, but--an infinite sensibility already, and to be vivified into individual consciousness thereof, by the knowledge of nature to which you are to give him the clue;--not to be made by your government of him, a power of creating effects, but already an immeasurable power of creating effects (that is, causal)--which you are to make him feel responsible for, by helping him to get experimental knowledge of the laws that obtain in G.o.d's creation.

For it is knowledge of laws that is the first thing attainable--not knowledge of objects. A child's senses are the avenues of the knowledge of objects; his self-activity is the avenue of the knowledge of laws. He must have experimental knowledge of laws before he can begin to have knowledge of objects, because his impulsive activity is the means of developing his organs of sense, by which he becomes capable of receiving impressions from objects of nature; and his own effective action produces the objects outside of his organs which first command his interested attention, and rouse his powers of a.n.a.lysis, or by which his powers of a.n.a.lysis are roused through your educating intervention.

It is the maternal nursing of body and mind which educates the free force within to produce transient effects, and finally objects, agreeable to the sensibility. Even before the will is educated to causality, it exerts itself, because exertion is agreeable to human sensibility; but when left uneducated, the will brings about effects that prove disagreeable ultimately, if not immediately, to the aesthetic being, paralyzing it more or less, if the organization be feeble; and perverting it when it is strong; in either case, whether crushing or exasperating it, producing selfishness, the germ of all evil.

Thus evil begins in the social sphere, in the disorderly action or in the neglect of those who have in charge the aesthetic free force of the child, compelling it to revolve on its own axis in a vain endeavor to obtain the satisfaction of its aesthetic nature, which it ought to obtain through the generous cherishing action of others' love, carrying it round the central sun in human companionship. The soul instinctively expects love, and to do so, and to act out love intentionally, is its salvation, its eternal life. There is no signature of immortality so sure as the immeasurable craving for love on the one hand, and the immeasurable impulse to love on the other hand, which characterizes man; for the satisfaction of the craving is no greater joy than the satisfaction of loving.

It is because death _seems_ the cessation of relation with our kind, that it is the king of terrors. When the disease or decay of the body curtails relations and makes us solitary, or incapable of enjoying relations, death is not dreaded, but craved as relief. To whomever it seems the beginning of wider relations, it is hailed as the revealing angel of G.o.d. Isolation is the horror of horrors. It was one of the primal intuitions that "it is not good for man to be alone." The nurse should remember this, and not leave the baby to feel lonely. Every mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction,--to come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life--a word which signifies active relation;--and, in its highest sense, spiritual relation. _Life_, _love_, and _liberty_ are identical words in their radical elements. There is no love without liberty, nor fulness of life without love.

The liberty of man, or his freedom to will, though it gives him the power to dash himself against antagonizing law, is the proof of infinite love to man in the Creator,--a love which must needs outmeasure all the evil he can do himself or others; for evil provokes others' love for our victims, and is self-limited, by reason of the pain it brings, sooner or later, on him who does it, and the desire for infinite love which it defines and stimulates.

Man and nature are the contrasts which G.o.d connects and harmonizes. He presents nature to the mind as immutable law, but before the understanding is formed to apprehend law, He emparadises the child in the love of the mother. In short, the human race embodies love to the soul, before the universe (which embodies law) is yet apprehended. The heart that apprehends love, is older than the mind which apprehends law; and it is because it is so, that man _feels free_. When man becomes mere law to man, instead of love, he feels he is enslaved.

These are the most practical truths for the kindergartner. If these propositions are truths (and their evidence is the explanation they give of the mysteries of sin and redemption, both of which are unquestionable facts of human history, according to the testimony of all nations), then let her see to it, that in her relation with the children of her charge, she never so presents the law, as to obscure the love, which it is the primal duty of men to embody and manifest to each other.

But, on the other hand, do not keep back the law; for the law, too, is one expression of the Creator's being. What is law? It is the order of the beauteous forms of things, which, when appreciated as G.o.d's order, becomes a stepping stone to his throne. For G.o.d proposes to share his throne with us, if we may trust another primeval intuition of the human mind, viz., that G.o.d commands man, male and female, that is, men in equal social relation, to "have dominion" over all creation, below man.