Chapter 8

The extreme form of phantasy is insanity, where the patient completely goes over to the unreal world and becomes the Queen of the World. And it might be objected that phantasying is the first stage of insanity. Yes, but it is the last stage of poetry. Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, one of the most glorious poems in the language, is pure phantasy. I rather fear that one day a grown-up Montessori child will prove conclusively that the feet of Maud did not, when they touched the meadows, leave the daisies rosy.

No, the Montessori world is too scientific for me; it is too orderly, too didactic. The name "didactic apparatus" frightens me.

I quote a sentence from _The New Children_, by Mrs. Radice.

"'Per carita! Get up at once!' she (Montessori) has exclaimed before now to a conscientious teacher found dishevelled on the ground with a class of little Bolshevists sitting on top of her."

In heaven's name, I ask, why get up? Life is more than meat, and education is more than matching colours and fitting cylinders into holes.

Montessori was thinking of the conscious mind of the child when she evolved her system, and the apparatus does not satisfy the whole of the child's unconscious mind. Noise is suppressed in a Montessori school, but every child should be allowed to make a noise, for noise means power to him, and he will use it only as long as it means power to him. I have watched Norman MacMunn's war orphans at Tiptree Hall at work. MacMunn, the author of _A Path to Freedom in the School_, did not say "Hush!"; his boys filled the room with noisy talk as they worked, and never have I seen children do more work with so much joy.

The Montessori teacher, when she finds that Jimmy is interfering with the work of Alice, segregates the bad Jimmy, and treats him as a sick person. But the right thing to do is to solve Jimmy's problem as well as Alice's. What is behind Jimmy's aggressiveness? Jimmy does not know, nor does the Montessori teacher, because she has been trained in the psychology of the conscious only.

Another reason why I am not wholly on the side of Montessori is, I fancy, that her religious attitude repels me. She is a church woman; she has a definite idea of right and wrong. Thus, although she allows children freedom to choose their own occupations, she allows them no freedom to challenge adult morality. But for a child to accept a ready-made code of morals is dangerous; education in morality is a thousand times more important than intellectual education with a didactic apparatus.

* * * * *

To-night Duncan came in, and as usual we talked education. I took up the subject of punishment, and condemned it on the ground that it treats effect instead of cause. After a little persuasion Duncan seemed inclined to agree with me.

"I see what you mean," he said, "but what I say is that if you abolish punishment you must also abolish reward."

"Why not?" I said. "The case against rewards is just as simple. A child should do a lesson for the joy of doing it. Milton certainly did not write _Paradise Lost_ for the five pounds he got for it."

"Yes, I see that," said Duncan thoughtfully, "but what about competition? The prize at the end introduces a breezy struggle for place."

I shook my head.

"No competition! I won't have it. It makes the chap at the top of the class a prig, and gives the poor chap at the bottom an inferiority complex. No, we want to encourage not competition but co-operation. Competition leads naturally to another world war, as competition between British and American capital is doing now."

Then Duncan floored me.

"And would you discourage football because it introduces the idea of competition?" he asked.

"Of course not," I replied

"Then why discourage it in arithmetic?" he asked.

It was an arresting question, and I had to grope for an answer that would convince not only Duncan but myself. That every healthy boy likes to try his strength against his fellows is a fact that we cannot ignore. Mr. Arthur Balfour's desire to beat his golfing partner and Jock Broon's desire to spit farther than Jake Tosh are fundamentally the same desire, the desire for self-assertion. And I see that the man who comes in last in the quarter-mile race is in the same position of inferiority as the boy who is always at the bottom of the class. Yet I condemn competition in school-work while I appreciate competition in games. Why?

I think I should leave it to the children. Obviously they like to compete in games and races, but they have no natural desire to compete in lessons. It appears that some things naturally lend themselves to competition--racing, boxing, billiards, jumping, football and so on. Other things do not encourage competition. Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton do not compete in the output of books; Freud and Jung do not struggle to publish the record number of analysis cases; George Robey and Little Tich do not appear together on the stage of the Palladium and try to prove which is the funnier. Rivalry there always is, but it remains only rivalry until _The Daily Mail_ offers a prize for the biggest cabbage or sweet-pea, and then competition seizes suburbia.

I should therefore leave the children to discover for themselves what interests lend themselves to competition, and what interests do not. I know beforehand that of their own accord they will not introduce it into school subjects. This is in accord with my views on the authority question. I insist that the teacher will impose nothing; that his task is to watch the children find their own solution.

* * * * *

I must write down a wise saying that came from Dauvit. A rambling and ill-informed discussion of Bolshevism arose in his shop to-night. Dauvit took no part in it, but when we rose to go he said: "Tak' my word for it, Bolshevism is wrong."

"How do you make that out, Dauvit?" I asked.

"Because it's a success," he said shortly.

* * * * *

To-night the Rev. Mr. Smith, the U.F. minister, came in. He is one of the unco' guid, and to him all pleasures are sinful. It happened that I was telling Macdonald the Freudian theory of dreams when he entered, and when Mac told him what the conversation had been about, he begged me to continue. It was evident that he had never heard of dream interpretation, and he was surprised.

"And every dream has a meaning?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I had a dream last night," he began, but I held up a warning hand.

"You shouldn't tell your dreams in public," I said hastily; "they may give things away that you don't want others to know."

He laughed.

"I don't mind that," he said, "I'll take the risk. Last night I dreamt that I was in a public-house among a lot of men who were telling most obscene stories. According to Freud every dream is the fulfilment of a wish. Do you mean to tell me that I wish to be in such a company?"

I explained that the dream as told is not the dream in reality, the meaning lies behind the symbolism, and it can be got at by the method of free association. I also explained that I did not believe the Freud theory, that the dream is always a wish, and suggested that Jung was a surer guide.

"According to Jung," I said, "the dream is often compensatory. In your own case you are consciously living the higher life, but there is another side of life that you are ignoring, and that is the vulgar pub side. Your dream is a hint that the vulgar side of life cannot be ignored. You may ignore it consciously, but your unconscious will seek the other side in your dreams."

This seemed to make him think.

"But the saints and martyrs!" he cried. "Think of the thousands who crucified the flesh so that they might win the everlasting crown! Do you tell me that they were all wrong?"

I lit my pipe.

"I think they were," I said, "for they merely repressed their animal life. They thought that they had conquered it, but they only buried it. The real saint is the man who faces his flesh boldly and loves it too, just as much as he loves his God."

Then the minister fled.

The interpretation of dreams is one of the most fascinating studies in the world. The method as evolved by Freud is simple, although the interpretation is anything but simple. Obviously the average dream has no meaning. You dream that a horse speaks to you, and then it turns into your brother. It is all nonsense, yet behind the nonsense is a serious meaning. Not long ago I was analysing a girl of sixteen. About a week after the analysis began she brought a dream which began thus: "I am invisible, and I have a tail that I can take off or put on."

Following the method of free association I said to her: "What comes into your mind about being invisible?"

"Oh, I've often wanted to be invisible, for then I could do what I liked; then I would be free."

Being invisible therefore meant being free.

Then I asked her associations to the tail part.

"Tail . . . monkeys at the Zoo; they are poor things always kept behind bars. Just like me. I forgot to say that my tail wasn't on in the dream."

Tail therefore meant something associated with confinement and restriction. It is significant that her tail was unattached. I took it to mean a wish-fulfilment dream; in it she got free from her neurosis.

The following night she dreamt that she was being driven in a motor car by a swanky chauffeur. They came to the bottom of a hill, and the car stopped, and she got out and walked. Her first association was: "The chauffeur had a big green coat on, one just like the coat you wear."

"So I was the chauffeur?" I asked.

She brightened at once.

"I see it!" she cried. "The car is the analysis; you are driving me away from my old life!"

"Excellent!" I said, "but don't forget that the car stopped at the bottom of the hill. What does the word hill give you?"

"Something difficult to climb. I hated climbing it and thought it a shame that the motor didn't take me up."

"Well?"

"I've got to climb to get better, haven't I?"

"That's right," I said. "I told you the other night that no analyst should give advice, and I refused when you asked me for it. In your unconscious you realise that the chauffeur is not going to take you up the hill; in other words you've got to do most of the work."

Freud holds that there is a censor standing between the conscious and the unconscious. Primitive wishes seek to come from the unconscious, but the censor holds up his hand. "No," he says, "that's too disgusting; the conscious mind couldn't stand that; it would be shocked. You must disguise yourself in harmless form!" And so the infantile sex wish is changed into a harmless dog or cycle. But if this is the case why should my little girl dream of me as a chauffeur? There was nothing disgusting about me, nothing that her conscious mind could not face.

I prefer Jung's theory. He says that we dream in symbols because symbolism is the oldest language in the world, and, as the unconscious is primitive it uses this language. We all dream of shocking things, and if the endopsychic censor were really on duty he would never allow these disgusting dreams to get through.

If I dream that my father is dead the Freudians declare that I either wish or, in the past, have wished unconsciously for my father's death. But surely so alarming a wish would be changed into a harmless form if there were a censor. One night I dreamt that an acquaintance, Murray, was dead. The first association to Murray was: "He's a lazy sort of chap." I think that all he stood for was laziness, and he was merely my own laziness symbolised. The dream was a hint to me to be up and doing, for I had been neglecting a task that I should have undertaken.

There is what might be called the cheese-and-tripe supper theory of the dream held by many people.

"There's nothing in dreams," they say, "nothing but the disorders following late supper."

A cheese-and-tripe supper will cause queer dreams, but the advocates of this theory cannot explain why a tripe supper should make me dream of--say--a tiger. Why not a lion or a mouse?

It is an accepted fact now in psychology that the dream is the working of the unconscious. Some theosophists claim that during sleep your spirit leaves your body and seeks the astral plane, but I have never seen anything resembling evidence of this. It may be a fact for all that.

Concerning the prophetic aspect of dreams I know nothing. I have heard that the night before the Tay Bridge disaster a woman dreamt that it was to take place, and she persuaded her husband not to travel by that ill-fated train, but I cannot vouch for the story. I believe, however, that the dream is prophetic in that the unconscious during the night is working out the problems of the next day. The popular saying about sleeping over a problem shows that there is a real belief in this aspect. I know a lady who was undergoing analysis. She was suffering from a father complex, that is, her infantile fixation on the father had remained with her, and unconsciously she was approving or disapproving of every man she met according as he did or did not in some way resemble her father.

For a few weeks after the analysis began she was always dreaming that she was back in her childhood home, and in her dreams she was always trying to get away from home and her father was always restraining her from going. Often the figure in the dream was not the father, but the associations always showed that the figure was standing for the father. One night the figure was the King, and her first association was: "The King's name is George. . . . That's father's name too."

This seems to be a case where the unconscious is striving to find a solution.

The way the unconscious does things is wonderful. I remember one night listening to a lecture by Homer Lane. He brought forward a new theory about education, and it was so deep that I did not quite grasp its meaning. At the time Alan, Homer Lane's youngest child, was one of the pupils in the school in which I taught. That night I dreamt that I was standing before a class. Alan was sitting in the front seat, and behind him was a boy whom in the dream I called "Homer Lane's youngest child." The new theory had become in the language of symbolism Alan's younger brother . . . in short, Lane's latest. Here again I cannot see why any censor should change a theory into a child.

* * * * * In my _Log_ I make a very, very poor statement about sex instruction. I say that children should be encouraged to believe in the stork theory of birth until the age of nine. That was a wrong belief, but then at that time I had not read Freud or Bloch or Moll. I see now that the child should be told the truth about sex whenever he asks for information. But I fear, that many modern mothers think that they have sexually educated their child when they tell him where babies come from. The physiological side of sex is the less important; you can take a child through all the usual stages--pollination of plants, fertilisation of eggs, right up to human birth, but the child will find no help in these informations when he faces his sex instinct at adolescence. Sex instruction should be psychological; it should deal with the sex instinct as one form of life force or libido. The child should be led to face it openly. It should be entirely dissociated from sin, and moral lectures should not be given.

Who is to give the instruction? That is the difficulty. Most parents and teachers cannot do it because their own sex instinct is all wrong. Make a remark about sex in the company of adults, and it will be reacted to in two ways; some will grin and laugh; others will be shocked. I hasten to add that the shocked ones are worse than the laughers. The laugh is a release of sex repressions; the shocked appearance is a compensation for an unconscious over-interest in sex. Anyway neither type is capable of talking about sex to children, and since humanity is roughly divided into prudes and sinners (not saints and sinners), there is little hope of a frank sex education for kiddies.

Many people say: "Oh, leave it to the doctors," but personally I haven't enough faith in doctors. Their attitude to sex is usually no better than the attitude of the layman. I know doctors who could give excellent instruction to children on the physiology of sex, but the only doctors of my acquaintance who could teach the psychological side are psycho-analysts or psycho-therapists of some sort.

Teachers can tackle the sex problem negatively. Sex activity is a form of life force or interest, and if a child is not finding life interesting enough there is a danger that he will regress to what is called auto-eroticism. When we remember that the sexual instinct is the creative instinct, and that creation in dancing or music or poetry or art of any kind is sublimated sex, that is sex raised to a higher power, we can readily see that one of the most important parts of a teacher's job is to provide ways and means for creation. I realise that this is not enough, but, as I say, I cannot see the way to a good sex education, until every teacher and parent has discovered his or her own sex complexes. Co-education helps, for then the commingling of the sexes affords a harmless and unconscious outlet for sex interest. But co-education is no panacea, for the sex problems of the individual child in a co-educational school are almost as immediate as those of the child from the segregated school.

IX.

This morning I was setting off for Dundee when Willie Marshall entered the compartment. He was dressed in his Sunday best, and I wondered why he was going to Dundee on a Wednesday.

"Hullo, Willie!" I cried, "what's on to-day?"

He looked troubled and angry.

"I've been summoned to serve on the jury that's tryin' that dawmed rat that stailt ten pund frae the minister," he said viciously, "and I had little need to lose a day, for I hae far mair work than I can dae. Mossbank's twa cairts cam in yestreen, and he's swearin' like onything that he maun hae them by the nicht." Willie is a joiner, and most of his work is building and repairing carts.

"So you think that Nosie Broon is guilty?" I said with a smile.

"Of coorse he is," he cried with emphasis.

"But," I said seriously, "you'll maybe alter your mind when you hear the evidence."

He grunted.

"Dawn nae fear! I'll show him that he's no to drag me awa frae ma work for nothing!"

He opened his _Dundee Courier_, and I sat and thought of the trial by jury method. I would not condemn it on the strength of Willie's dangerous misunderstanding of what it means, but I do condemn it on other grounds. Weighing evidence is a difficult enough business even for the specialist, for it is almost impossible to eliminate emotion in forming a judgment. With a jury of citizens, some of them possibly illiterate, too much depends on the advocates, or on outside causes.

During the war there was a glaring instance of this. A soldier shot the man who had been trying to steal his wife's love . . . and the verdict of the jury was Not Guilty. The emotional factor in this case was that the dead man was a German. I am not arguing that the prisoner should have been hanged or imprisoned, for I think both procedures are bad; I merely point out that in the eyes of legalism the soldier was guilty, yet the jury threw legalism overboard.

Another instance of the emotional factor over-ruling legalism is seen in the trial of the man who shot Jaures. He was acquitted. . . . Not Guilty . . . the man who slew one of the best men in Europe. On the other hand the youth who attempted to assassinate Clemenceau was sentenced to death, pardoned, and sent to penal servitude. In France therefore it is a crime to kill a politician of the right, but a virtue to kill one of the Socialist left.

Abstract justice is a figment. No jury and no judge can be impartial. The other day a man was charged with striking a Socialist orator with an ice-pick. The judge lectured the orator on his Bolshevism, and then gave the accused imprisonment for a short term in the second division. Suppose that the Bolshevist had used an ice-pick on a Cabinet Minister!

I do not think that our judges and magistrates ever consciously show partiality. They are an upright class of men, men above suspicion. It is their unconscious that shows partiality just as mine does. The army colonels who tried Conscientious Objectors were upright men, but it was wrong to imagine that they could possibly see the C.O.'s point of view. So it was with the regular R.A.M.C. doctors. To some of them the neurotic patient was a swinger of the lead, a malingerer. They had never heard of the new psychiatry, and the neurotic was a strange creature to them. Their ignorance supplemented their prejudice, and they could not possibly have treated these men with justice.

The truth is that we all make up our minds according as our buried complexes impel us. If I saw a Frenchman fighting a Scot I should take the Scot's side, because I have a Scot complex. Occasionally our complexes work in the opposite way. I fancy that the few people who sided with the Germans in the war were suffering from an "agin the government" complex, which, if you trace it deep enough is usually found to be an infantile rebellion against the father. In this case the State represented the father, and Germany was the outside helper who should conquer the father (or mother) country. Had Germany won, the unpatriotic man would immediately have turned his hate against Prussia, for then Prussia would have been the father substitute.

Our loves and hates and fears are within ourselves. I know a man who has a nagging wife; she has a constant wish for new things. He bought her a hat, and for two days she was happy; then she nagged, and he bought her a dress. Three days later she demanded a necklace, and he gave her a necklace. He may continue giving her everything she asks for, but if he buys her a Rolls Royce and a house in Park Lane she will be a dissatisfied woman, for "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves." I advised him to spend his money on having her psycho-analysed.

* * * * *

To-night Tammas Lownie the joiner came into Dauvit's shop. He is an infrequent attender at Dauvit's parliament, and Dauvit seemed slightly surprised at his entry.

"Weel, Tammas," he said, "it's no often that we see you here. What's brocht ye here the nicht?"

Tammas spat in the grate.

"Oh, it was a fine nicht, and I thought I'd just tak a daunder yont," he said easily.

Dauvit looked at him searchingly.

"Na, na, Tammas, it winna dae! It wasna the fine nicht that brocht ye yont. Ye've got some news I'm thinkin'."

Tammas laughed loudly.

"Dauvit, ye're oncanny!" he cried. "Ye seem to read what's at the back o' a man's held. But I have nae news to gie ye."

Dauvit chuckled.

"I wudna wonder if ye didna come yont to tell me aboot the eldership," he said slowly.

The expression on Tammas's face showed that he _had_ come to tell us that the minister had asked him to become an elder.

"'Od, Dauvit, noo that ye come to mention it I wud like to hear yer advice aboot the matter. I dinna see how I can tak an eldership, Dauvit."

"How no?" asked Dauvit in surprise.

Then he added: "But maybe ye ken whether ye've got a sinfu' heart or no."

"It's no that," said Tammas hastily, "I'm nae worse than some other elders I ken," and he glanced at Jake Tosh. "No, it's no the sin I'm thinkin' o'; it's my trade."

"But," I put in, "why shouldn't a joiner be an elder?"

Tammas bit off a chunk of Bogie Roll.

"That may as may be, dominie, but I'm mair than a joiner; I'm an undertakker."

"Weel," said Dauvit, "what aboot that?"

Tammas shook his head sadly.