Spontaneous Activity in Education Part 25

=The education of the moral sense=.--Thus the conception of moral education, like that of intellectual education, must include a basis of feeling, and be built up thereupon, if we are not to lead the child towards illusion, falsity and darkness. The education of the senses, and liberty to raise the intelligence according to its own laws on the one hand; the education of feeling, and spiritual liberty to raise oneself, on the other--these are two a.n.a.logous conceptions and two parallel roads.

Consider our position in relation to children. We are their "stimuli,"

by which their feeling, which is developing so delicately, should be exercised.

For the intellect, we have the various objects, colors, forms, etc.; but for the spirit, the objects are ourselves. The pure souls of children must derive nourishment from us; they should fix themselves on us with their hearts, as their attention is fixed upon some favorite stimulus; and by loving us they should exalt themselves in their intimate spiritual creation.

When interest leads the child to take the box of colors, and keeps him absorbed in them, the objects lend themselves pa.s.sively to his manipulation, but the colors reflect the luminous rays of the sun, which then strike the virgin retinae of eyes not as yet completely matured and adapted. So, too, when the child's heart turns to us, and fixes itself, asking nourishment from our souls, we ought to be always ready, like pa.s.sive objects, inasmuch as we should never, through our egotism, fail to respond to the child's needs; we should respond with all our intimate energies, to reflect upon him the luminous rays required by his pure soul, as yet unadapted to life.

We ought not to call him by name, and offer him our affection, inviting him to accept our help; but, like the material objects which attract him by their smoothness, their l.u.s.ter, and their varied and interesting forms, and by ocular demonstration of the means of lofty intellectual exercise, as in the colored alphabets and the rods which contain the first secrets of numeration--we, too, should wait; not coldly, but rather making the child feel that we contain a rich material which is at his disposal, ready to be taken as soon as he stretches out his hand to grasp it. Our "response" to the child should be as full, as prompt and as complete as that of the objects which he may manipulate, but which at every touch give an upward impetus to the intellectual life of the child.

How many persons must have noted that on some occasion when they have caressed children, the little ones have retreated, as if repelled and offended; and many must also have remarked that when the affectionate impulse of a child has been checked, he shrinks into himself, humiliated, like the mimosa when touched. Now the respect we owe to the spiritual liberty of the child should manifest itself as follows: we must never force our caresses on him, greatly as we may be attracted by his fascinating graces; nor must we ever repel his outbursts of affection, even when we are not disposed to receive them, but must respond with sincere and delicate devotion. We are the "objects" of his love, the objects by means of which he is organizing his life. The most perfect teachers and mothers will be those who will take the didactic material for their model, and imitate this by filling themselves in every sense with moral riches and being full of response in every detail; pa.s.sive in abnegation, yet active as wellsprings of affection. And if all the sensorial objects combine all possible vibrations accessible to man--the vibrations of light and color, as also those of sound and heat, so too should they combine in themselves all the vibrations of internal sensibility, waiting for the thirsty soul to choose among them.

It may be asked: And how shall we make the child love us; how shall we make the child "feel"?

If a child could not see colors he would be blind; and no one could give him sight. And so if the child could not feel, no one could give him sensibility; but since Nature has united mother and child not only by the flesh, but even more closely by love, it is indubitable that at birth the child brings with him not only flesh but love. Now he who loves, even though it be only a single object, has in himself a sense which is capable of receiving impressions _ad infinitum_; he who sees an object possesses sight, therefore he who sees an object will see.

He who loves a mother or a son, "loves"; that internal sense vibrates, and certainly not only to the object present to it at the moment.

Even that poor spider, artificially deposited in the bag of another mother, adopted and defended the alien eggs, because the spider is capable of maternal love.

Therefore the child whom his mother has loved and who was helped by that love, has that "internal sense" by means of which he is capable of love. The "human objects" which present themselves to that sense have reflections from it.

We should "wait to be seen" by him; the day will come when, among all the intellectual objects, the child will perceive our spirit, and will come to us to take his ease within us. It will be to him a new birth, akin to that other awakening, when some one of the objects first attracted him and held him. It is impossible that that day, that moment, should not arrive. We have performed a delicate work of love towards the child, presenting to him the means which satisfy his intellectual needs, without making ourselves felt, keeping ourselves in the background, but always present and ready to help. We have given great satisfaction to the child by succoring him; when he needed to clarify the order of his mind still further by language, we offered him the names of things, but only these, retiring at once without asking anything from him, without putting forward anything from ourselves. We have revealed to him the sounds of the alphabet, the secret of numbers, we have put him into relation with things but restricting ourselves to what was useful to him, almost concealing our body, our breathing, our person.

When he felt a desire to choose, he never found an obstacle in us; when he occupied himself for a long time with an exercise, we were careful to protect the tranquillity of his work, as a mother protects the refreshing sleep of her babe.

When he made his first plunge into abstraction, he felt nothing in us but the echo of his joy.

The child found us always indefatigable when he called upon us, almost as if our mission to him were to offer him what he requires, just as it is the mission of the flower to give perfume without limit or intermission.

He found with us a new life, no less sweet than the milk he drew from his mother's breast, with which his first love was born. Therefore he will one day become sensitive to this being who lives to make him live, from whose self-sacrifice his freedom to live and expand is derived.

And undoubtedly the day will come when his spirit will become sensitive to our spirit; and then he will begin to taste that supreme delight which lies in the intimate contact of soul with soul, and our voice will no longer be heard by his ear alone. The power to obey us, to communicate his conquests to us, to share his joys with us, will be the new element in his life. We shall see the child who suddenly becomes aware of his companions, and is almost as deeply interested as we are in their progress and their work. It will be delightful to witness such a scene as that of four or five children sitting with spoons arrested over the smoking bowl, and no longer sensible to the stimulus of hunger because they are absorbed in contemplation of the efforts of a very little companion who is trying to tuck his napkin under his chin, and finally succeeds in doing so; and then we shall see these spectators a.s.sume an expression of relief and pride, almost like that of a father who is present at the triumph of his son.

Children will recompense us in the most amazing manner by their progress, their spiritual effusions, and their sweet obedience. The fruit they will cause us to gather will be abundant beyond anything we can imagine. Thus it comes to pa.s.s when the secrets of life are interpreted. "Give and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom."

=The essence of moral education=.--To keep alive and to perfect psychical sensibility is the essence of moral education. Around it, as in the intellectual education which proceeds from the exercise of the senses, _order_ establishes itself: the distinction between right and wrong is perceived. No one can _teach_ this distinction in all its details to one who cannot see it. But to see the difference and to know it are not the same thing.

But in order that "the child may be helped" it is essential that the environment should be rightly organized, and that good and evil should be duly differentiated. An environment where the two things are confused, where good is confounded with apathy and evil with activity, good with prosperity and evil with misfortune, is not one adapted to a.s.sist the establishment of order in the moral consciousness, much less is one where acts of flagrant injustice and persecutions occur.

Under such conditions the childish consciousness will become like water which has been made turbid, and more poisonous than is alcohol to the life of the foetus. Order may perhaps be banished for ever, together with the clarity of the consciousness; and we cannot tell what may be the consequences to the "moral man." "Whoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him ... that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." "If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee."

However, the properly organized environment is not everything. Even in intellectual education it was not the spontaneous exercise alone which refreshed the intelligence; but further, the lessons of the teacher which confirmed and illuminated the internal order in process of development. On these occasions she said: "This is red, this is green." Now she will say: "This is right, this is wrong." And it will not be unusual to find children like the one described above, who make good and evil the center of consciousness, and, placing it above material bread and intellectual nourishment, will propound the question more vital to them than any other: "What is good? and what is evil?" But we must not forget that moral lessons should be brief; and that Moses, the father of the sages, in order to inculcate morality, not in a child, but in a race, gave ten simple commandments, which to Christ seemed superfluous. It is true, however, that at the head of these was the "law" of love; and that Christ subst.i.tuted for the Decalogue an amplification of that law, which comprises within itself all legislations and moral codes.

It is possible that good and evil may be distinguished by means of an "internal sense," apart from cognitions of morality; and in such a case, of course, the good and evil in question would be absolute; that is to say, they would be bound up with life itself and not with acquired social habits. We always speak of a "voice of conscience"

which teaches us from within to distinguish the two things: good confers serenity, which is order; enthusiasm, which is strength; evil is signalized as an anguish which is at times unbearable: remorse, which is not only darkness and disorder, but fever, a malady of the soul. It is certain that the laws of society, public opinion, material well-being, and threats of peril would all be powerless to produce these various sensations. Often serenity is to be found among the unfortunate, whereas the remorse of Lady Macbeth, who saw the spot of blood upon her hand, gnawed at the heart of one who had acquired a kingdom.

It is not surprising that there should be an internal sensation which warns us of perils, and causes us to recognize the circ.u.mstances favorable to life. If science in these days demonstrates that the means for preserving even material life correspond to the moral "virtues," we may conclude that we shall be able to divine what is necessary to life by means of the internal sensibility. Have not the biological sciences demonstrated an a.n.a.logous fact? The biometer applied to man has made it possible to reconstruct the absolutely average man, that is to say, the man whose body gives average measurements in every part; and these average measurements have been found, by means of the statistical and morphological studies of medicine, to correspond to "normality." Thus the average man would be a man so perfectly constructed that he has no morphological predisposition to disease of the organs. When the figure of a man was reconstructed in accordance with average biometrical proportions, it was found to correspond in a remarkable manner to the proportions of Greek statues. This fact helped to give a new interpretation to "aesthetic sentiment." It was evidently by means of aesthetic feeling that the eye of the Greek artist was able to extract the average measurement of every organ, and to construct a marvelous and exact whole therewith. The "enjoyment" of the artist was his enjoyment of the "beautiful"; but he felt even more profoundly that which contained the triumph of life, and distinguished it from the errors of nature, which predispose to illness. The triumph of creation can give an intimate pleasure to him who can "feel it"; errors, even slight, will then be perceived as discords. Aesthetic education is, in short, akin to the mathematical approximation towards the absolute average; the more it is possible to approach to the true measure in its extreme limits, and the closer we can get to this, the more possible does it become to have an absolute means of comparison for the consideration of deviations. The great artist is thus able to recognize the beautiful in a detail even in the midst of other discordant details; and the more capable he is of possessing an absolute sense of the beautiful, the more readily will he perceive any disproportion of form.

Something of the same sort may happen in the conscience in relation to the distinction between good and evil; the more so as the good stands for real utility in life far more directly than the beautiful, and the evil may be roughly said to represent danger. Have not animals, perhaps, an acute instinct of self-preservation, which dictates infinite details of conduct to them, both for the maintenance of life and for its protection? Dogs, horses, and cats, and generally speaking, all domestic animals, do not await the imminent earthquake quietly and unconsciously, as does man, but become agitated. When the ice is about to crack, the Esquimaux dogs which draw the sleighs detach themselves one from the other, as if to avoid falling in; while man can only observe their amazing instinct with stupefaction. Man has not by nature these intense instincts; it is by means of intelligence and the sensibility of his conscience to good and evil that he constructs his defenses and recognizes his perils. And if this intelligence of his, which is actually capable of transforming the world, raises him to such a supreme height above animals, to what a lofty eminence might he raise himself by developing his moral consciousness!

But on the contrary, man to-day is reduced to the point of asking himself seriously whether animals are not better than he. When man wishes to exalt himself, he says: "I am faithful as a dog, pure as a dove, strong as a lion."

Indeed, animals have always that instinct which is admirable, for it confers on them a mysterious power; but if man lacks sensibility of conscience he is inferior to the animals; nothing can then save him from excesses; he may rush upon his own ruin, upon havoc and destruction in a manner that might fill animals with stupefaction and terror; and if it were in their power they might set themselves to teach man, that he might become equal to themselves. Men without conscience are like animals without the instinct of self-preservation; madmen rushing on destruction.

What shall it profit man to discover by means of science the law of physical self-preservation in its most minute details, if he has no care for that which corresponds in man to the "instinct" of his own salvation? If an individual has a perfect knowledge of hygienic feeding, of the manner in which to weigh himself in order to follow the course of his own health, of bathing and of ma.s.sage, but should lose the instinct of humanity and kill a fellow-creature, or take his own life, what would be the use of all his care? And if he feels nothing more in his heart? if the void draws him to it, plunging him into melancholy, what does his well-nourished and well washed body avail him?

Good is life; evil is death; the real distinction is as clear as the words.

Our moral conscience is, like our intelligence, capable of perfection, of elevation; this is one of the most fundamental of its differences from the instincts of animals.

The sensibility of the conscience may be perfected, like the aesthetic sense, till it can recognize and at last enjoy "good," up to the very limits of the absolute, and also until it becomes sensitive to the very slightest deviations towards evil. He who feels thus is "saved"; he who feels less must be more vigilant, and do his utmost to preserve and develop that mysterious and precious sensibility which guides us in distinguishing good from evil. It is one of the most important acts of life to examine our own consciences methodically, having as our source of illumination not only a knowledge of moral codes, but of love. It is only through love that this sensibility can be perfected.

He whose sense has not been educated cannot judge himself. A doctor, for example, may be perfectly informed as to the symptoms of a disease, and may know exactly how cardiac sounds and the resistance of the pulse are affected in diseases of the heart; but if his ear cannot perceive the sounds, if his hand cannot appreciate the tactile sensations which give the pulse, of what use is his science to him?

His power of understanding diseases is derived from his senses; and if this power is lacking, his knowledge in relation to the sick man is vanity. The same holds good of the diagnosis of our own conscience; if we are blind and deaf, innumerable symptoms will pa.s.s un.o.bserved, and we shall not know on what to found our judgment. The tedium of futile undertakings will oppress us from the first moment.

On the other hand, it is "feeling" which spurs us on towards perfection.

There have been persons with an extraordinary power of recognizing good and evil, just as the Greek artists showed extraordinary powers of recognizing the normal forms of the body under the guidance of the aesthetic sense. Saint Teresa tells us that when some worldly person who was not good approached her, she suffered as if she were inhaling a bad smell. She explained that of course she did not smell anything at all, in the material sense; but that she actually suffered, not merely in imagination; her suffering was a real spiritual distress which she could not tolerate.

More interesting still is the following story which refers to the early Fathers of the Church, who lived in the desert. "We were seated at the feet of our Bishop," says one of the monks, "listening to and admiring his holy and salutary teaching. Suddenly there appeared on the scene the leading 'mime,' the most beautiful of the public dancers of Antioch, covered with jewels; her bare legs were almost concealed by pearls and gold; her head and shoulders were uncovered. A throng of persons accompanied her; the men of the period never wearied of devouring her with their eyes. An exquisite perfume which exhaled from her person scented the air we breathed. When she had pa.s.sed, our Father, who had looked steadfastly at her, said to us: 'Were you not fascinated by so much beauty?' We were all silent. 'I,' continued the Bishop, 'experienced great pleasure in looking at her, for G.o.d has appointed that some day she shall judge us. I see her,' he added, 'as a soiled and blackened dove; but this dove shall be washed and shall fly heavenwards, white as snow.' As a fact, this woman returned and asked to be baptized. 'My name is Pelagia,' she said, 'or such is the name my parents gave me, but the people of Antioch call me The Pearl, because of the quant.i.ties of jewels with which my sins have adorned me.' Two days later she gave all her goods to the poor, put on a hair shirt, and took up her abode in a cell on Monte Oliveto, which she never left until her death." (Montalembert, _Les Moines d'Occident_, vol. 1, p. 86.)

=Our insensibility=.--How remote are we from that delicate sensibility which responds to evil by suffering and to the good perceived in others as it were miraculously, by a feeling of pleasure! In our society it is possible for us to live for a long time with a criminal, to esteem him, press his hand, etc., until he is at last exposed by the scandalous discovery of his misdeeds. Then we say: "Who would have thought it? He always seemed an excellent person."

And yet it is impossible that the criminal showed no signs, no perversities of feeling, no heartlessness which should have revealed him to us from the outset. No one will say that we ought all to become wonderful aesthetes like the Greek sculptors, or as sensitive as the saints; but if we admit that it is a barbarous thing to pa.s.s by the beauties of art without perceiving them; that it is the mark of defective civilization to confound horrible coa.r.s.eness and monstrosity with ideal beauty, to be unable to distinguish the strident noise of the tram-car wheels, or the deafening crash of ill-tuned instruments from the harmonies of Bellini or Wagner; that each of us would blush for such insensibility, and would conceal it--how is it we do not perceive that such obtuseness is habitual to us in moral matters? We see that we are capable of confusing virtuous persons and criminals, without any foreboding. How is it that so often in the case of judicial errors, the voice of the innocent did not resound in our ears, although his trial was a public one, and we allowed him to languish in prison for years? How is it that goodness should be so obscure a thing that we confound it with prosperity? How is it that those rich men of whom the gospel says "Woe unto you, rich men, for ye have your reward," can think of "improving the morals" of the poor, without any examination of their own moral lives or the lives of those belonging to them? almost as if they believed that the rich are essentially good and the poor essentially bad.

If such darkness as this reigned in the intellectual field, we should be unable to conceive the form of madness which would present itself to our eyes. There are confusions in the moral field which it is impossible to imagine in any other domain of life. If some day the youth of the nations, more clear-sighted than those of to-day, hear that the Christmas feast was kept on the battlefields of the European war, they will understand the origins of the war itself. In such a situation, David (to whom indeed it would have been inconceivable) would have accepted the taunt of his enemies as well deserved, when they asked him: "Where is now thy G.o.d?" "We have lost G.o.d" would have been a fitting lamentation. But to celebrate His festival indifferently under such conditions is to be unconscious of having lost Him. How long ago did the soul die, and when did the building up on death begin? What a terrible episode of madness is this monstrous slaughter, upon which the tree of peace was planted in honor of the Savior!

Far indeed are we from the delicate sensibility to evil of Santa Teresa, or the keenness of spiritual vision which enabled the man of G.o.d to see the white dove beneath the soiled feathers of the sinful woman. The difference is not as that between the taste of a peasant and that of an artist, but as that between a corpse and a living man.

It is evident that we have suffered death, albeit we are unconscious of having died.

Here, then, and not in hygiene, must we find the secret of our life.

We have something more corruptible than our bodies, a life more fragile than our physical life; and the peril of darkness hangs over us. This is the secret of man.

If man loses the light that leads him on towards a better world, he falls into an abyss far below all created animals.

He who loves, therefore, will bestow all his care on these wellsprings of life; how frail are the lungs of a new-born infant, how easily can an unnatural mother deprive him of air and so suffocate him! Yet what is this easily accomplished act, which nevertheless destroys a life, in comparison with the infinitely easier and more deadly act by which we may procure the death of the soul?

The death of the soul, like that of the body, may be readily distinguished from a state of insensibility; in vain do we apply a red-hot iron to a corpse; there is no response.

He who is alive, however, is not only capable of reacting to a stimulus very much less intense than a red-hot iron; he who lives and feels may perfect himself--and this is life.

It is enough that souls should "feel." How, then, could they live quietly amidst evil? If under the windows of our house people were piling up refuse until we felt that the air was being vitiated, could we bear this without protesting, and insisting on the removal of that which was causing us to suffer? If, moreover, we had a child, we should clamor still more loudly, and should even set to work to clear away the nuisance with our own hands, in our solicitude for his health. But if the bodies of mother and child lay dead, they would no longer be conscious of the pestilential air.

It is characteristic of "life" to purge the environment and the soul of substances injurious to health. Christ was called "the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world," not the Master who preaches, but He who purifies. And this is the morality that springs from sensibility: the _action_ of purifying the world, of removing the obstacles that beset life, of liberating the spirit from the darkness of death.

The merits of which every man feels he owes an account to his conscience are not such things as having enjoyed music or made a discovery; he must be able to say what he has done to save and maintain life.