Part 3

It is twenty-two years since Froebel died. He had made a band of kindergartners, and set them at work. They all began with small pecuniary reward. It was at first a starving business. In Europe it is more difficult than it is here, to induce women of culture and position to undertake any work which is paid for with money. Froebel's genius had overcome this prejudice in a few instances. The ladies of one wealthy family in Hamburg became his pupils, one of whom introduced it into England, though under some great disadvantages. The Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow is the most important person inspired by Froebel; and the circumstances of her introduction to him are even picturesque. Being in feeble health, she went into an obscure village for rest and retirement; and one day asked the woman with whom she boarded, if anything interesting was going on among the villagers. The woman replied that there was "one queer thing, a natural fool who played about among the children, who followed him, and were very much taken up with him." The Baroness hardly heeded this singular assertion; but some time after, being abroad for exercise, she saw a white-haired man under a tree, with a group of children around him; and, thinking this might be the "natural fool," she drew near, and was soon arrested by what she heard, and joined the little throng herself. Subsequent interviews with Froebel--for it was he--made a new era in her life, and she corresponded with him closely till his death. She has since been his chief apostle. After years of earnest work, with tongue and pen, she succeeded in getting rid of the injunction against his schools, made by the Prussian Government, which was jealous of what claimed to be an improvement on their world-renowned Reform. Since this injunction was taken off, she has worked, by means of a normal school which she helped to found in Berlin, in which she lectured gratuitously many years, fighting earnestly against just such deteriorations of the system as have already begun to appear in this country. Some of the pseudo-kindergartens use the plays and occupations there, as here, in the most superficial way. When children work by patterns, or are shown--instead of being told in words--how to do things, they merely imitate, with as little accompaniment of intellectual action as a monkey; and neither the mind nor the character will be developed, but rather dissipated and weakened. Others, especially in this country, use the plays in the intervals between lessons or reading,--which, being taught before the mind has been regularly developed by success in doing things, and before the meaning of words has been learned in an adequate manner, are confused with a chaos of unrelated particulars, that it will take years of self-education, by and by, to grow out of; and, in short, only a few vigorous natures fortunately situated ever surmount the difficulty.

But the work of the Baroness has not been in vain; and she writes in a late letter that a government decree has just been made in Austria, ordering that all the children between four and six years of age should be sent to kindergartens; and that every normal school must give kindergarten training, and every teacher, whether of that or the following stages of education, must be made acquainted with Froebel's principles and practices. This great step is the final result of the agitation of the subject for the last few years in Europe, which began in the first Philosophers' Congress at Prague, in 1867. The dying out of the teachers instructed by Froebel himself was manifestly producing a deteriorating effect in the quality of kindergartners; and his most intelligent and devoted disciples proposed to the Congress an effort for the revival of his science and art in its pristine purity and power.

It is most desirable that such falsification and deterioration do not get ahead in America. But there is impending danger of it, and it can only be prevented by establishing and keeping up adequate training-schools, and so informing public opinion, that it shall not be tolerated in the community to call by the sacred name of kindergarten anything short of it. There will necessarily be infant schools of an inferior quality for a long time, because it will take time to make common an adequate education in the art of kindergartning; but let such be _called_ play-schools. _Pretenders_ in this profession should be frowned upon by all good people, as pretenders in the clerical profession are. They do more harm than bad clergymen can, because the subjects of their teaching are more helpless and undefended, and can do nothing for themselves.

The experience I have had in my apostolate in this cause, has brought me to the conclusion that in America the best way to proceed is, to induce the public authorities to have kindergartning taught in the State and city normal schools, and to open public kindergartens as fast as there are adequate teachers for them.

Everything depends on the quality of the first kindergartners we train--their spiritual, moral and intellectual quality--which must be such as to operate in two ways: first, to do for the children the right thing; secondly, to educate the community to require it done as a general thing. Many characteristics of America give great encouragement. We are not dragged back, as they are in Europe, by old customs, whose roots are intertwined with the heart-strings of inherited sentiment. Our patriotic hearts fasten themselves on the great future that our fathers died to inaugurate. We must justify their ideal of universal equality, by an equal education, an equal opportunity for development of all our people. "The spirit that makes all things new," as the heart of childhood craves, and its hand is eager to enact, is "_every_ word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," to make alive the human heart. Therefore we leave behind us--more and more--those conventions of the Old World that have made even the great work of educating rank as inferior to that which wields the sword of war. Some people groan at seeing how the growing facilities of getting money, which our institutions give to every man and woman of energy, is effacing the old distinctions of rank. But if our Culture may be made universal, by employing part of this money in making public education adequate, what ground will be left for _distinction of rank_? What pretext for exclusion will there be, when there are none rude and uncultivated to be excluded? That any distinction of ranks came among the children of God is incidental to free agency. Children know nothing of them--till we profane their golden age of innocence by revealing them. (Appendix, Note A.)

LECTURE II.

THE NURSERY.

IT is my object to inspire, if I can, an enthusiasm for educating children strictly on Froebel's method, and no other; and I wish to justify myself by giving reasons for this; for I know that, at first sight, Americans start back from putting faith in any leader; immediately exclaiming, that they must be free to follow the light of their own minds.

This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees the danger of yielding to any individual authority more than I do; but it is certain that nothing may make us so narrow, as a bigoted adherence to the rule of following the light of our own mind condignly. The light of our own individual mind may be darkness; it must, in any case, be that of a farthing candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The question is, do we distinguish between that greater light and our own idiosyncrasy, with a becoming and discriminating humility? I once heard a lady, whose name was Gurley, say to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total depravity of human nature from the experience of her own heart." Ah! but that is not quite fair, he replied, "for how do you know what is human nature and what is Gurleyism?" Here is tersely suggested the danger of the individualistic philosophy, which has developed itself into a new kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denunciatory in its _animus_ than any other; and which shuts up its votaries in a dungeon from the light of Universal experience. I acknowledge the legitimacy of the philosophy of individualism, as a protest against the glittering generality which theological philosophy had become, at the time when it arose; and as affirmation that God makes every man separately an eye, and if he would see into the Infinite Over-soul, he must look with it out of his own window. But this is only the way to begin to search for truth. If he is not self-intoxicated, every man soon learns that his window does not command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a window to him, but to every other man; that we are all free to look out of each others' windows, some being higher up in the tower of the common humanity than our own, commanding wider views; in fine that it is with _all_ the sons of man that "wisdom dwells," and they must inter-communicate with mutual reverence if they would know her well. Froebel had not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will not be wise if you do not look out of Froebel's window.

The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of Froebel's mind from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the common motherly instinct, purified of individual passion and caprice, and, understanding itself as the presence of the Living God overshadowing her, is the social atmosphere necessary to be breathed by every child who is to grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Froebel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively, as it were, by lacking it in his own childish experience; and he verified it positively afterwards, by studying the method of unsophisticated mothers, at that earliest period of their children's lives, when, in order to keep them alive merely, the nurse must take the rule of her nursing from the needs which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's own expression of want and content--its tears and smiles.

Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art, which is preliminary to that of the Kindergarten.

By the primal miracle (_i.e._, wonder working) of nature, the mother finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an immeasurable susceptibility of suffering, and an immeasurable desire of enjoyment, and an equally immeasurable force intent on compassing this desire, already in activity, but with no knowledge at all of the material conditions in which he is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited in the exercise of this immense nature.

As I have said before, every form of animal existence _but_ the human, is endowed with some absolute knowledge, enabling it to fulfil its limited sphere of relationship as unerringly as the magnetized needle turns to the pole, and, even with more or less of enjoyment; yet with no forethought. But the knowledge that is to guide the blind will of the human being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily life, exists substantially outside of its own individuality in the mother, or whoever supplies the mother's place.

And throughout the existence of the human being, the forethought that is to enable him to appreciate his ever multiplying relations with his own kind, and which grows wider and sweeter as he fulfils the duties they involve, is essentially outside of himself as a mere individual; being found first in those who are in relation with him in the family, afterwards in social, national, cosmopolitan relationship; till at last he realizes himself to be in sonship with God, in whom all humanity, nations, families, individuals, "live and move and have their being." There is no absolute isolation or independency possible for a spiritual being. This is a truth involved in the very meaning of the word spirit, and revealed to every family on earth, by the ever recurring fact of the child born into the arms of a love that emparadises both parties, on which he lives more or less a pensioner throughout his whole existence, so far as he lives humanly, finding fullness of life at last in the clear vision and conscious communion of an Infinite Father, who has been revealing Himself all along, in the love of parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife, friend, fellow-citizen and fellow-man. Christ said, that little children see the Father face to face, but surely not with the eyes of the body or of the understanding! They see him with the heart. And is it not true, that we never quite forget the child's vision in turning our eyes on lower things? for what but remembrance of our Heavenly Father's face is hope, "that springs eternal in the human breast?" What but this remembrance are the ideals of beauty, that haunt the savage and the sage? the sense of law that gives us our moral dignity, and in the saddest case, what but this are the pangs of remorse, in which, as Emerson has sung in his wonderful sphinx song, "lurks the joy that is sweetest?"

Froebel has authority with me, because, in this great faith, making himself a little child, he received little children in the name (that is, as germinating forms) of the Divine humanity, with a simple sincerity, such as few seem to have done since Jesus claimed little children as the pure elements of the kingdom he came to establish on earth; and exhorted that, as they were such, they should be brought to him as the motherly instinct prompted, and declared that they were not to be forbidden (that is, hindered as all false education hinders.)

As an American then, and more--as a human being, I acknowledge no authority except the union of love and thought in practical operation. But whenever I see this union in any one, to a greater degree than I have it in myself, I bow before that person, and _feel_ (which is the subtlest kind of knowing) that I am larger wiser, freer, more effective for good, by following and obeying him as a master for the time being.

Therefore, after the study I have made of Froebel, and of the method with little children that he was fifty years discovering and elaborating into practical processes, whose _rationale_ and creative influence I perceive; I feel, as it were, _Divinely authorized_ to present him to you as an authority which you can reverently trust; and so be delivered from the uncertainties of your own narrow and crude notions, inexperienced and ignorant as you undoubtedly are, however talented.

It is quite necessary for me to say, and for you to accept this now, or our short time together will be wasted. There is a time for criticism undoubtedly, and nothing is true that can not make itself good against "honest doubt." But as Sterne has said, "of all the cants that are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrisy may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most provoking. I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man, whose generous heart will give up the reins into his author's hands, for the time being, and let him lead him where he will." I am quoting from memory, and may forget the exact words; but the idea is, that the mood of self-surrendering reverence is the mood for profitable study, for it is to "become a little child," which Christ told his disciples was the condition of any one's becoming the greatest in the kingdom of Divine Truth.

Let us begin, then, with reverently considering the new born child, as Froebel did; for that is to be "the light of all our seeing."

A child is a living soul, from the very first; not a mere animal force, but a person, open to God on one side by his heart, which appreciates love, and on the other side to be opened to nature, by the reaction upon his sensibility of those beauteous forms of things that are the analysis of God's creative wisdom; and which, therefore, gives him a growing understanding, whereby his mere active force shall be elevated into a rational, productive will. For heart and will are, at first, blind to outward things and therefore inefficient, until the understanding shall be developed according to the order of nature.

But during this process of its development, adult wisdom must supply the place of the child's wisdom, which is not, as yet, grown; that is--an educator must point out the way, genially, not peremptorily; for in following the educator's indications, the child must still act in a measure from himself. As he is irrefragably free, he will not always obey; he will try other paths--perhaps the contrary one--by way of testing whether he has life in himself. But unless he shall go a right way, he will accomplish nothing satisfactory and reproductive; and it is Froebel's idea to give him something to do, within the possible sphere of his affection and fancy, which shall be an opportunity of his making an experience of success, that shall stimulate him to desire, and thereby make him receptive of the guidance of creative law, which is the only true object for the obedience of a spiritual being.

To the new born child, his own body is the whole universe; and the first impression he gets of it seems to come from his need of nutriment. But it is the mother, not the child, that responds to this want, by presenting food to the organ of taste, and producing a pleasurable impression which arouses the soul to _intend itself_ into the organ, which is developed to receive impression more and more perfectly, by the child's seeking for a repetition of the pleasure. For a time, whatever uneasiness a child feels, he attempts to remove by the exercise of this organ, through which he has gained his first pleasant impression of objective nature. Therefore is it, that his lips and tongue become his first means of examining the outward world into which he has been projected by his Creator.

The ear seems to be the next organ of which the child becomes conscious, or through which he receives impressions of personal pleasure and pain; and here it is noticeable, that _rhythmical_ sound seems, from the very first, to give most pleasure; and is wonderfully effective to soothe the nerves, and remove uneasiness. All mothers and nurses sing to babies, as well as rock them, (which is _rhythmical_ motion,) and this pleasant impression on the ear diverts the child from intending himself exclusively into the organ of tasting. He now stretches himself into his ears, whose powers are developed by gently exercising their function of hearing.

The child seems to taste and hear, before he begins to see anything more definite than the difference between light and darkness. By and by a salient point of light, it may be the light of a candle, catches and fixes his eye, and gives a distinct visual impression, which is evidently pleasurable, for the child's eye follows the light, showing that the soul intends itself into the organ of sight. Soon after, gay colors fix its gaze and evidently give pleasure. The eye for color is developed gradually, like the ear for music, by exercise, which being pleasurable becomes spontaneous.

The whole body is the organ of touch; but as the hands are made convenient for grasping, to which the infant has an instinctive tendency, and the tips of the fingers are especially handy for touching, they become, by the intension of the mind into them, the special organ for examining things by touch, and getting impressions of qualities obvious to no other sense. When, as it sometimes happens, by malformation or maltreatment of them, the eyes fail to perform their functions, it is wonderful how much more the soul intends itself into the special organs of touch, developing them to such a degree, that a cultivated blind person seems almost to see with the tips of the fingers. This fact proves what I have been trying to impress on your minds, that the soul which spontaneously desires and wills enjoyment, takes possession and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the Creator, and partly, (which I want you especially to observe,) by the genial, sympathetic, intelligent, careful co-working of the mother and nurse; who, by what we call nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to accomplish this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. And we shall be better convinced of the virtue of this nursery play, if we consider the case of the neglected children of the very poor, so pathetically described by Charles Lamb. See essays on Popular Fallacies, No. 12.

Madame Marenholtz-Bülow has happily remarked, in her preface to Jacob's Manual, _Le jardin des Enfans_, that "to develop and train the senses is not to pamper them." The organs of tasting and smelling do not require so much exercise by the duplicate action of the mother, as those of seeing and hearing. The former have for their end to build up the body; the latter to lead the child's mind out of the body, to that part of nature which connects him with other persons. The functions of both are equally worthy; but those of the latter belong to the child as a social and intellectual being. It is the mother's office to temper the exercises of each sense, so that they may limit and balance each other. And in order to limit those which are building up the body, so that they shall not absorb the child, the action of the others must be helped out. "Our bodies feel--where'er they be--against or with our will;" but to see and hear all that children can, requires exertion of will and this is coaxed out by the sympathetic action of others. Yet the functions of tasting or smelling are not to be banned. The Creator has made them delightful; and if others do their proper part, their exercise will never become harmful. To enjoy tasting and smelling is no less innocent than to enjoy seeing and hearing. There is no function of mind or body but may be performed Divinely. Milton shows insight into this truth by making Raphael sit and eat at table with man in Paradise; and he says some wonderful things upon the point, which will bear much study. And have we not in sacred tradition a symbol, still more venerable, of the truth, that the fire of spirit burns without consuming, and may transform the body without leaving visible residue? There are in Brown's philosophy (which does not penetrate into _all_ the mysteries of the rational soul and immortal spirit) some very instructive chapters on the social and moral relations of the grosser senses, (as taste, smell and touch are sometimes called.) It is the part of rational education to understand all these things thoroughly, and adjust the spontaneous activities by subordinating them to the end of a harmonious and beneficent social life. The Lord's Supper may be made to illustrate this general human duty.