Part 6

Rousseau affirms that every child, if left to its own natural growth, would think its mother was its creator. And William Godwin in his _Enquirer_ (or some volume of his writings) has quite an eloquent paper, setting forth that the natural religion of a child is to worship its earthly parents. I have made some observations and had a personal experience which makes me doubt this, though I do not doubt that the characteristics of parents nearly always determine the character of the child's religion. But the question of who is his own creator does not naturally come up to a child, even when he begins to ask who made the things about him. His own consciousness is of "being increate," and when brought to know that his body grows old and must die, the fear that this causes is because he imaginatively associates his undying self, which is a "presence not to be put by" with the perishing body. What the soul, by virtue of its inherent immortality, fears and hates, is loneliness, absolute isolation! And when we think of the body, which we identify with ourselves from the moment that we have taken it up and walked by its instrumentality, as put away alone in the ground, the undying person that the soul is, shudders, and can only be comforted by learning to conceive itself wholly detached from the decay, and housed within the bosom of Him who is the Alpha and Omega of our life; of Him whom we have learnt to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the process of living in human relations. For we know ourselves as individuals first by means of the body, and we know ourselves as a component part of the social whole of humanity by means of genial intercourse with our kindred, it being revealed to us that we are substantially social, as well as distinctly individual, by our instinctive horror of separation from them. Later in life only, there are pleasures of solitude for those few who by imaginative act make nature populous with personifications, and consequently the refracting atmosphere of the Divine Personality. The baby that finds itself alone cries for and is comforted by the embrace which restores the sense of union with its mother. Seldom is a baby in such a wretched state of feeling that a tender embrace and kiss will not completely comfort it.

What a proof it is that God is _Love_, that the very embrace that symbolizes to the baby's heart the sense of human companionship, gives its mind that impression of objective nature which is the first momentum of the human understanding! The gentle pressure of one sensitive body upon another produces counter-pressure, a resistance that is positively pleasurable, whereby the impenetrability of matter becomes a delightful instead of a frightful revelation to the mind of the Immutable Reality of the loving Creator, as the complement of our own changeful individuality! It is the first syllable of that word (or speech of God) made intelligible by the various qualities and forms of matter, the Truth which He is forever addressing to man. How gracious it is, that He should so inextricably mingle the first impression of matter with that perception of the _otherness_ of person that makes Love possible! Thus love and the sense of individuality are correlative creations and twin births. Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love (which in its healthy degree is innocent), and the perception of _otherness of person_, with whom it is delightful to be in free union, becomes the basis of the self-forgetting generosity of mankind. These opposite principles are at first mere and perhaps equal sources of satisfaction, having no moral character whatever. Afterwards, they become respectively hard selfishness or a weak and base servility, or they may rise into a majestic self-respect, and that sublimest love which is to make the human race, as a whole, the _image of God_, not only king over material nature, but one with the perfect Son of Man, also Son of God, who, with a humility and dignity equally venerable, is able to say, "I and my Father are One!"

But you will say that I am getting quite beyond the nursery.

In the earlier years, the growth of the religious life is merely germinal. And as it is involved within the mothers at the beginning, it must be cherished _sympathetically_ by her removing all occasion for self-care and self-defence, and thus prevent the sense of individuality from degenerating through fear into inordinate self-will and self-love. The child should be treated with unvarying tenderness and consideration, without having his senses pampered into morbid excess by over-indulgence, but above all things, never wounding nor frightening his heart, nor repressing the simple and healthy expression of his feelings and thoughts. For enforced repression tends to produce ugly temper, baseness, or subtlety, according to the child's temperament, which is also in imperfect social harmony, if not absolutely quarrelsome. It must be her work, therefore, not only to complete the child's organic education, but to take him, as it were, into her own affectionate spirit by using the methods which Froebel has suggested to the mother for the discipline of her infants. (I use this word _discipline_ in its true sense of teaching; not in the sense of _punishment_. That the word _discipline_ should ever have come to mean punishment is a severe commentary on the ideas and modes of education that have hitherto prevailed in Christendom.)

The kindergartner, as well as the mother, must be thoroughly grounded in the faith that God has done His part in the original endowment of children; and that He is truly present with her, helping her to remedy the effects of the mother's shortcomings. She will certainly succeed in her work if she studies His laws with an earnest purpose to carry them out, first in the government of herself, and then in leading the children to self-government. Wordsworth in his _Ode to Duty_, sings:--

"There are who ask not if Thine eye Be on them, who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth. _Glad hearts!_ without reproach or blot, Who do Thy work, and know it not! And blest are they who in the main This happy faith still entertain, Live in the spirit of this creed, Yet find another strength according to their _need_. May joy be theirs while life shall last, And _Thou_, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast."

Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found in this condition when

"Love is an unerring light, And joy its own security."

And that "other strength," which must come by reflection on and study of the unfolding nature of the child in the felt presence of the Inspirer of Duty, will certainly be needed by the kindergartner who will receive children not always from the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but of uncultured servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say that there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those who could teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not altogether bad material for the production of good motherly nurses; but it must not be left _wild_; it needs a great deal of discipline; and I hope the time may come when schools for the education of children's nurses, such as Froebel established in Hamburg, which still exist, may be founded in all our cities.) Though I think the education of _mothers_ is still more important and the first thing to aim at, as it would render nursery maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short a period of a mother's life when she _has_ young children, and the book of nature which these few years open to her _is so rich_, that, for her own being's sake as well as for the children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to delegate her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On the other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes, the mother needs to be relieved of the increasing care; and children, in their turn, need other influences than can be had in a family, especially in families where parents have work to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, "a consummation devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when labor may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to leave their children's souls uncared for in order to get the wherewithal to sustain their bodies.

The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in its earliest infancy _by its mother_ rather than by a person comparatively uninterested in its personality, is this, that _only_ a mother can respect a child's personality sufficiently. All others regard the child for its manifested qualities; but with the mother, it is the child itself that she loves, quite irrespective of any qualities that he manifests. Phenomenally, a little child is a complex of self-assertion and generosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or a feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct to "have dominion" which gives vitality to self-assertion. We call this primal desire for union his heart, and this primal self-assertion his will. The will expresses itself in efforts to change its environments, putting what is at rest in motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does not yet know how to put in order, or to change things artistically. The child acts without external motive,--doing things merely because it _can_. Even after a child is old enough to think and talk, and has done some act for which you see no reason or motive, when you ask him why he did it, he not unfrequently will say, "_because_." I remember when I was a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a perfect sense of satisfaction that it was _an answer_; and when it would sometimes be said, "_because_ is no reason," or "_because_ is an old woman's reason," I recollect my feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself to have given the most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for I affirmed the primal truth, that a self-determining person in spontaneous action, if only of some instinct, is a first _cause_[4]--an _absolute cause_--to the extent of consciousness. It was an intuition.

Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the root of all stability of character, all nobleness of manifestation. But self-assertion in an ignorant child is more apt than otherwise to be disorderly, discordant, and perhaps destructive; it therefore provokes resistance in the unthinking, but challenges the thoughtful to give guidance. It is of life-and-death importance to the child whether this force shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it or increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a genial sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and gladly surrender itself. A mother _loves_ this little ignorant force of self-will and wants it to have free course. She cannot help desiring to have her child have its own way. She does not want it to be opposed by others. She will, as far as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by awakening the child's affectionateness, and so captivating its fancy as to make it feel it is doing as it likes, though it be something different from what it was impelled to do at first; in short, she inspires him to will the better thing, and so educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into a harmonizing and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity and nobleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear of "breaking the child's will." A child's will should never be broken, but opened up into harmony with God's will through a lower harmony with the will of its loving and loved mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more sure than any one else to bring about this result, because she acts from an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought, while the kindergartner by thought must cultivate in herself the impulse.

There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if it were the greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great evil if it be not properly subordinated to the wisdom which appreciates the divinity of order, or if it is alternated with capricious severities; in short, if the indulgence proceeds from indolence or self-love instead of love of the child. The indulgence that really comes from the last is a recognition (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of the child,--a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two evils, extreme indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as extreme severity. Indulged children return from afar. The prodigal of the Gospel story may have been over-indulged, perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of goods, and go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But the sinner, when he _came to himself_ (observe that expression), recognized the self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very indulgence; and it was the immeasurableness of that love that revived his self-respect and hope, and saved him; for the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth, "upbraiding not."

The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is better to give up the point of controlling its will to righteousness for the moment, than to do that; and a parent is the least likely of all persons to wound his child's heart.

When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent who trusts his own heart will leave the rebel to the consequences which God holds in his gracious hands for the final salvation of every one of his children.

Besides, to _choose_ to give up one's own will is the only complete and salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount up spiritually like the eagle and renew its strength. There are families in which the act of disobedience is absolutely unknown, in earlier or in later life; where there is no necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes are enough. The most perfect, if not the only real, obedience I have ever seen, has been that of strong men to an unexacting, tender mother.

This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it seems to me that the greatest social disorders that exist in the nations among which the "order that reigns in Warsaw"[5] is foremost, is the consequence of _unreasoning obedience_ to wills _not_ infinitely wise and good. The worth and duty of obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of the command; and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by a disinterested and proper respect for the being who is commanded. Children should only obey their parents, _in the Lord_; and parents should never "provoke their children to wrath."

I may be told that the important element of self-assertion (which gives strength to character) may be weakened by being always disarmed, and killed by the mother's sympathy; and that to provoke it into conscious strength, direct antagonism is necessary. But the best antagonism is that quiet, inevitable one, that comes from the inexorableness of material nature which the child must needs feel, the more disorderly he is, but which he sees is insensate and impersonal; whose antagonism, therefore, does not grieve his heart, and disappoint his hope as human oppression does, making him sad or bitter, but stimulates his mind to conquer and subdue it, or develops a dignified patience. The appointed domain for kingly man is not the brotherhood, but material nature; and gradually he is to learn that nature's inexorable laws are the expression of a Supreme Personality as benignant as it is august, who takes up His human child into Himself, not without his concurring will; for mankind mounts on the nature which he gradually subdues into a stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it. The mother must remember that though the first, she is not the only instrumentality by which the Divine Providence works. The time comes when she is compelled to deliver her cherished darling up to other influences; when the child bursts out of the nursery, not only self-asserting and affectionate, but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfaction of sensibilities that cannot be met within that narrow precinct.

The kindergarten must, then, succeed by complementing the nursery; and the child begin to take his place in the company of his equals, to learn his place in their companionship, and still later to learn wider social relations and their involved duties. No nursery, therefore, not even a perfect one, can supersede the necessity of a kindergarten, where children shall come into cognizance of the moral laws which are to restrain and guide their self-assertion, and quicken and enlarge their social affections, leading them to self-denials for the sake of opportunities for themselves of useful and creative art, beneficence, and heroism.

The time for transition from the nursery to the kindergarten is definitely indicated by two facts. Firstly, Divine Providence has so arranged general family events that every mother must give up having the child live, as it were, entirely within _her_ life, because she has other children to nurse, or other social duties to do. And, secondly, every child's growth in bodily strength and conscious individuality makes him too strong a force of will for so narrow a scope of relation as is afforded by one family. While hitherto, to be outside of the single family influence was an evil, it would now be an evil to confine the child entirely to it, narrowing his heart and mind, and deforming his character. He needs to be brought into relation with equals who have other personal characteristics, other relations with nature and the human race than his own family. The instinct of the growing child, at this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is unmistakable. To check it vexes or depresses him. In getting possession, first of his body, and then of his personal and social consciousness, he has become an object to himself, and feels himself a power among other powers affecting each other. But he is still more or less consciously a prisoner (if not a slave) of nature, by reason of his ignorance of the laws of the universe,--_that body_ outside of his own body,--which he is destined, in alliance with others, to take possession of, by action _upon_ and _within_ it, giving him knowledge of it, and enabling him to make it into instrumentality for the expression and embodiment of great ideas and a noble will.

All government worthy of the name begins in self-government, a free subordination of the individual in order to form the social whole. Subordination is something higher than subjection. We subject mere animals; intelligent moral agents must be subordinated. It is still the mother's part rather to inspire; the kindergartner's part is to subordinate, not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course, it must be regulated so far as not to let the children interrupt each other _impolitely_, and to keep it to some main subject. Some kindergartners begin the session by asking each in turn what is interesting to him. Mrs. Kraus-Boelte generally receives each one as he or she comes in. They go to her for the morning kiss, and have something to say, in which she expresses due sympathy, and later recurs to and connects with what others say, and thus produces general conversation. Mrs. Van Kirk is very happy in her introductory conversations.

In playing with the gifts, the teacher dictates certain movements and arrangements, for the purpose of the children's getting into the habit of listening and quickly catching the directions given; and the children should be encouraged to follow _her words_ in what they do, rather than to imitate each other. In their spontaneous work they often make a new symmetrical form, which is really beautiful; and then it is well to call on the child to direct his companions how to make it; for children delight in the dignity of _directing_, and learn to be very precise in the use of all the words expressing relation of all kinds,--prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs,--_precisely_ as well as nouns and verbs. Language does not merely transfer the outward inward, but soon begins to transfer the inward outward. Love, and other sentiments of the soul, good and bad, are named, as well as sensible objects. Even the instinctive search after proximate causes leads children to infer the substantiality of _wind_ and the other invisible forms of matter; and the spiritual senses inherent in the "Me," which is the most essential of all substances, verifies the ideal world to children, as truly as the bodily senses verify the material world, and even _more so_; for children live in God before they _exist_ out of God. The Italian philosopher Gioberti says that the soul is a _spiritual activity_; that is, it sees God as the first act of its life. God says, "_Be thou_" and the soul--before it is put into the sleep of nature (the deep sleep that came upon Adam)--looks back and says, "_Thou art_." We have the memory of this primeval vision, and act in our sense of holiness (wholeness?), right, justice, pure love from the uncalculating delight of loving, the ideals of beauty, and the sense of accountability to God and man, which forever haunt us, sometimes giving us pain, as _remorse_, whose sting is in the comparison of our outward manifested self with our inward sense of "being increate" (as Milton expresses it). It is this supernatural pre-intellectual _soul_ which distinguishes man from the animal creation, and is symbolized by his form, which looks upward to the symbol of infinity made by the sky, with which the human being instinctively _communes_, and towards which the child wants to fly,--and delights in and loves the birds, beyond all other forms of animal life, because they _can_ fly. Gioberti goes on, in his psychology, to say that when the soul, which has recognized its Divine Source as the first act of its life, is put to sleep in nature, it is gradually waked up by the individual forms of nature, which are so many syllables of the Divine Word that are echoed in human words, which describe matter and its evolutions; then the understanding begins, and (which is the point I want you to observe especially at this moment) the words of even a very young child soon bring to its understanding spiritual realities. And it is the office of education to see that the relations of things,--the laws of order among things,--the adjustment of external cause and effect, be _accurately worded_; and especially that the _spiritual_ consciousness gets a happy symbolization; that is, that the best words are used to _do justice_ to the Ideas of God and the sentiments of the heart of man.