Part 7

A materialistic educator (or no less a mere dogmatist in religion, who does not see that the logical formulas and abstract terms of scientific theology cannot possibly _wake up_ the primeval vision) may do an all but infinite mischief to the character and heart, by the words he uses in talking to children; and the theologian a greater mischief than the materialist, because the forms and evolutions of matter are, as I have said, _syllables of the Word_ that was in the beginning with God and, in a certain sense, _God_, while the abstractions of the human mind are the refuse of finite spirit, infinitely superficial, mere limitations of thought which become stumbling-blocks to the mind when not used as stepping-stones to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks. Never should children be talked to in the language of theological science, but wholly in imaginative symbolization, and the symbols should be chosen with great care, and we should be on our guard against rousing the faculty of abstraction which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose premature development is injurious in strict proportion to ignorance and sensitiveness. The symbols of the spiritual should be human because human consciousness involves substance outside the physical, and, therefore, did the Word which had not been comprehended in its creation of "everything which it had made," though "without it nothing was made," take flesh and dwell among us, in order that we might apprehend the glory of God and perfection of man with our whole nature. That it would do so, was the insight of the Hebrew genius, whenever by worthy soul-action the law-giver, king, and whoever entered into "the liberty of prophesying" was raised to the height of his nature. Now a child is "on its being's height," "mighty prophet," "seer blest,"

"On whom those truths do rest That we are toiling all our lives to find,"

and therefore a child can supply a substantial meaning to any name for God adequate to awaken the living echo of the soul that

"Cometh from afar Trailing clouds of glory from God,"

whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, "to suffer and to be for a season on earth."

I hope you follow me in my thought, for I think I am looking into the child, which is the thing that ought to be done if one undertakes to teach it. That the child really knows God before God is even named to him is not a speculative theory with me but a fact of my experience. It is one of my earliest remembrances, that I was sitting in the lap of a young lady, whose name and countenance I have forgotten, who was caressing me, and calling me sweet, beautiful, darling, etc., when all at once she seized me into a closer embrace and exclaimed, rather than asked, Who made you?

I remember my pleased surprise at the question, that I feel very sure had never been addressed to my consciousness before. At once a Face arose to my imagination,--only a Face and head,--close to me, and looking upon me with the most benignant smile, in which the kindness rather predominated over the intelligence; but it looked at me as if meaning, "Yes, I made you, as you know very well." I was so thoroughly satisfied, that I replied to the question decisively, "A man."

The lady said to another who sat near us, "Only think! this great girl does not know who made her!"

I remember I was no less sure of my knowledge, notwithstanding she said this. Though it was the first time I had thought God and given the name "man" to the thought, it seemed not new to me. I had felt God before.

I _was_ a rather large girl, more than four years old, as I know from the fact that we were living in a certain house, to which we went on my fourth birthday. My next recollection is of going into a room of this house, where my mother was sitting, working at an embroidery frame that hung against the wall. I went up to her and said, "Mamma, Eliza asked me who made me, and I told her a man, and she said he didn't!" I stated this reply as a grievance and outrage.

Since I came to the age of reflection, I have always regretted the conversation that followed. It was not judicious, and seems to me a little out of character for my mother, who was of strong religious sentiment and quick imagination, and all other conversation on religious subjects that I remember of hers was very good. She was rather thrown off her guard by my unexpected theology and lost her presence of mind. I was her oldest child, and she had waited to see some enquiry raised before speaking on the subject. I had seemed more stupid than I was, for I belong by nature rather to the reflective than perceptive class, and so had very little language. At this distance of time I cannot, of course, remember the details of the conversation, but I came out of it with another image of God in my mind, conveying not half so much of the truth as did that kind Face, close up to mine, and seeming to be so wholly occupied with His creature. The new image was of an old man, sitting away up on the clouds, dressed in a black silk gown and cocked hat, the costume of our old Puritan minister. He was looking down upon the earth, and spying round among the children to see who was doing wrong, in order to punish offenders by touching them with a long rod he held in his hand, thus exposing them to everybody's censure. Of course my mother said no such thing to me, but what she did say, by subtle associations with the words she used, gave me this image, which I need not say rather checked than promoted my spiritual advancement.

This experience has been of value to me as a teacher since, for it has effectually saved me from being didactic and dogmatic in my religious teaching of children. The Socratic method is the true way of bringing into the definite conscious thought God's revelation of Himself to the soul. That image of authority and power to punish did not, I think, help, but rather puzzled my moral sense of which I was already conscious. For I remember that I used to muse very much in my childhood upon the mental phenomenon of feeling myself to be two persons. I was clearly conscious of an inward conversation on all occasions of a question of right and wrong, when a higher and lower law distinctly uttered themselves. The lower self often prevailed by the argument that the thing to be done was _transient_, I would do it only this _once_, and never again; and often I thus sinned against the very present God, which I think I might not have done so presumptuously, had I associated the thought of this strange other me with that kind face of Love Divine. When later in life I did learn that the remonstrating voice was unquestionably God, because He is the Love that I saw in my childish vision, the war between self-love and conscience ceased. But this was not till a great body of death had been accumulated, which I have never shuffled off except in moments of hope.

But to take up the thread of my discourse again. I would very earnestly say that the Socratic or conversational method is the only way of bringing into a child's definite consciousness God's revelation of Himself to souls. But this requires a mutual understanding of words, and if we are careful, we may produce this in the kindergarten.

Froebel intimates that a general impression of there being an invisible Friend and Protector may be given by the baby's seeing the mother in the attitude of devotion, and he would have recognition of God called forth by her naming the unseen Father at moments when the child's heart is overflowing with joy and love, or seeking to know where some beautiful thing comes from. The child feels already at such times the presence of the Infinite Cause, the Infinite Source of joy and goodness, and the name of Heavenly Father given to this presence will not be an empty vocable. Using with the name of Father the word "our," with which the Lord's Prayer begins, suggests that He is the Father of all alike, and all human beings will thus be united together with Him in the child's imagination.[6]

This idea of one personal but comprehensive Being, the centre of the social organization, is a quickening of the immortal personality, which has a date in time no less certainly than the quickening of the body, and is our sense of identity.[7]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] See Hazard's _Man a Creative First Cause_. A book published since this lecture was first given.

[5] "Order reigns in Warsaw" was the form of words in which the subjugation of the Poles to Russians in 1849 was announced in France.

[6] See Frederic Denison Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer, published by Hurd & Houghton.

[7] See Appendix, note A.

LECTURE IV.

THE KINDERGARTEN.

IN my last lecture I spoke of the ideal nursery; for only there, hitherto, has the divine method of education ever been completely carried out, the unquestionable teacher there being _the child_, "trailing clouds of glory from God who is our home"; its sweet content and inspiring smile indicating when its nurse is treating it aright; while all that is wrong, whether proceeding from mere ignorance or selfish wilfulness on the part of the adult, is indicated by its cries of fright and anger, which it behooves her to heed.

How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes of the mother and infant, mutually emparadised in child's play (that mutually educating communion of trust and love, by which the child is put into gradual possession of his body, and joyous consciousness of his individuality),--how is it, I say, that we find education has lost its _ideal_, and as soon as the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom, an antagonism has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we find ourselves to be, as soon as we come to reflect?

But I must remember that what we have to speak of especially is the kindergarten, which follows hard upon the nursery.

When the child's growing activities begin to require a larger social sphere than the nursery,--_i.e._, at about three years old,--it was Froebel's plan to gather the children of several families into what he called a "Child Garden," and to extend the nursery law of _cherishing_ (which is the dealing with living organisms that children are), by exercising them for several hours of every day in rehearsing in plays, in the first place, all the sweet charities of life. This employs their physical forces, and makes them experimentally know that human happiness and goodness are social and generous.

For the so-called "movement plays" are social exercises, gently calling out moral sentiments, as well as intellectual powers. They can only be beautiful and enjoyable when they give mutual pleasure; and this involves that mutual reference and kind consideration of each other which leave no room for selfish feeling or action. Moral education is the alpha and omega of a kindergarten, but it cannot be given by precept. To _do_ the will of God,--_i.e._, to obey the moral law,--"doing to others as we would have others do to us," _even in play_, is the only way for children to know vitally the doctrine of moral life.

Froebel has suggested a variety of these movement plays, all of them conceived with the greatest care as to their intellectual as well as moral effect. They always have a fanciful aim, within the scope of the child's knowledge and affection, and to play them begins to develop the understanding also.

A gentle intellectual exercise, involved in learning by rote, reciting, and singing the songs that direct the plays, takes the rudeness out and puts intelligence into that exhilaration of the animal spirits which healthy children crave, and prevents it from exhausting the body or disordering the mind; the joyous association of the children with each other aiding this effect. In the sedentary plays, which are called "occupations," and in which the child is genially drawn into producing symmetrical effects to the eye, by making things (albeit only little toys) which begin their artistic life, Froebel has had equal regard to the moral as to the intellectual influences. When the child has gone beyond the age in which he is satisfied with making transient forms and gathering the materials back into boxes, and desires to make something that will last, a legitimate sense of property arises. He feels that what he has made is _his own_, for the thought and work which he knows that he has put into it are his own. Froebel, therefore, would have him, before he begins to _make_ anything, pause and appropriate it intentionally to some object of his love, reverence, or pity. This will check the otherwise rampant propensity to hoard, and prevent the passions of avarice, vanity, and jealousy from making their appearance. In our common school life, the pride of _showing off_ their powers, and excelling others, is regularly cultivated in children by competition, as a stimulus to industry. But this is as unnecessary as it is deleterious. For disinterested desire to confer pleasure, and express gratitude and love of others, is found by experience to be a surer stimulus to industry than the baser passions, and has the additional value of cultivating positive sweetness and active benevolence. It is desirable, and really produces the greatest practical humility, for children to regard themselves as embryo powers of beneficence, learning to do the Heavenly Father's business from the beginning, like the child Jesus. Then may they grow "in favor with God and men," as they grow "in stature," and all their knowledge will prove a divine wisdom unto the salvation of others and themselves. To go into a truly ordered and well governed child-garden, and see all the little children busy making things for the Christmas tree, or for birthday and new year's gifts, for all the friends they know or fancy, we shall see sufficient proofs that love is the truest quickener of industry, and love-inspired industry the true sweetener of the disposition and temper.

Moreover, such industry is the special desideratum to temper the spirit of the present age, which is so keen and energetic that it hurries our young men into pursuits in their amusements which take on the character of gambling; and hence gambling in business, gambling in politics, where even human beings, instead of being regarded as _brothers to be kept_, are used as dice, to be recklessly thrown in our game. The only preventive or cure for this passion for gambling is industry, and the only industry that is attractive is artistic; and why should not all industry become artistic, now that the great cosmic forces are suborned, by our advancing civilization, as the legitimate slaves of men, to do all the hard work for men? I have already set forth this view of the subject in the _Plea for Froebel's Kindergarten as the Primary Art-School_, which I appended to Cardinal Wiseman's lecture on the relation of the arts of design with the arts of production (which I published in 1869, under the title of _The Artist and the Artisan Identified,--the Proper Object of American Education_).

Before I leave these general remarks for more specific explanation of Froebel's method of intellectual development, I would make one more observation. It is in the social and moral character of the kindergarten that Froebel has shown himself so much superior to Rousseau, whose method was to cultivate individualities exclusively, the teacher pretending to know no more than the child, but taking his idiosyncrasy for his only guide in discovery and invention. In the first place, Rousseau's method has been found an impracticable one, for it requires a separate teacher for every child; and in the only instance, perhaps, in which it was ever carried out with perfect fidelity, that of Maria Edgeworth's eldest brother (we have in her memoirs of her father all the facts), the ultimate effect was to make a monstrosity. He was utterly strange, so odd and unsocial, nobody but his father, who educated him, could have any practicable relation with him. He might be said to be conscientiously unsocial, and therefore immoral; and, though not ungifted, he was an utter failure in human life. We see similar effects produced measurably, in all cases where the main object is to cultivate the individual rather than the universal characteristics of humanity. Froebel was tender, and gave freedom to individualities, but he took great care not to _pamper_ them. They are the results of the free-will, irrefragable, and will take care of themselves sufficiently, if not cruelly snubbed, but tenderly respected.

What is to be _intentionally_ cultivated in earliest infancy, are the _general_ affections and faculties, which relate us to our kind, insuring _common_ sense and _common_ conscience with a reasonable self-respect. Therefore, what is done in the kindergarten is necessary for all children, their idiosyncrasies being left free to play on the surface and give variety and piquancy to life, freedom and dignity to the individual.

All minds seem to be divided into two classes. In one class, the primal tendency is to observe single objects; and these are the so-called smart children, interesting the spectator by their vivacity and precocity. In the other class, children seem to be dull in sense, unobserving, but dreamy, as if they had an over-mastering _presentiment_ of that connection of things which binds them into wholes. It has been remarked that this latter class turns out the great men,--the poets, the philosophers, the inventors, high artists, great statesmen, and law-givers,--while the precocious children disappoint expectation; probably because they have accumulated such a chaos of single impressions of disconnected things, that it quite overwhelms the classifying and generalizing powers of the intellect. Froebel's method equally meets the respective wants of both these classes of minds, supplying by specific culture the _other_ side of their practical endowment. By its discipline of production, it gives the lively and restless ones the wand of the Fairy-Order, in discovering to them the connections of things, and the conditions as well as laws of organization; while for those of the dreamy, poetic, philosophic temperament, it sharpens the senses to individual things, supplying the definite and sensuous impressions, and suggesting the corresponding words that enable them to give an account of their own thinking, and illustrate to others the struggling ideal; which, like conscience and the love of order and rhythm, is perhaps the yet persistent vision of that Heavenly Father's face, which Jesus Christ has told us we are created beholding.

Jesus evidently is quoting a familiar proverb, when he says "for their angels behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." Does it not refer to the Persian mythology current in Judea after the captivity? However neglected and eclipsed, that primeval vision can never be quite lost. It persists in the love of order and beauty; in the desire to be loved _infinitely_; in hope "that springs eternal in the human breast"; in the ideals of imagination, that haunt both the savage and the sage, and, at worst, in _remorse_, in which, as Emerson says, "there is a certain _sweetness_," whether it be gentle as in what the Quakers call "the reproof of truth," or felt as the reproachful strivings within us of our neglected infinite nature.

This brings me to speak of Froebel's superiority to Pestalozzi. The kindergarten is not mainly _object-teaching_, though of course a constant object-teaching is _involved_; all the materials of their work and all the surroundings of the children become objects of examination in their individualities of form, size, number, etc., and in their possible connections with each other and with the _child_. If Froebel proposes to give the fruits of the tree of _life_, before he gives those of the tree of knowledge, it is only that the latter may prove, _not a curse_, but a blessing. The world's history and the present state of civilization in the foremost nations of the world shows us that knowledge may be _a power_ without being _a good_ (a snakish subtlety not Divine Wisdom). It begins to be realized in Europe as well as in America, that Froebel's idea of education, in making _character_ the first thing, and knowledge the _hand-maiden_ of goodness, is the desideratum of the age, and promise of the millennium.

I should like to read you some letters of eminent men in France, addressed to Froebel's most earnest disciple and apostle, the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow, which I have translated from the appendix of her _Work in Relation to Education_ (see Appendix, Note B).

In an address to the school committee of Boston in 1868 I gave the call addressed in 1867 by the Philosophers' Congress in Prague to the convention of teachers in Berlin, and the call of the latter to the second convention of this congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1869. The burden of all these papers is the paramount necessity of religious and moral education, begun in earliest infancy, in order that the modern intellectual activity may not land us in licentious vices and heartless atheism, _our nearest dangers_. They all accept Froebel's method of education by work and experience (beginning with the work and experience of the child of three years old) as the first condition of the regeneration of the human race.

It is the office of the kindergartner to awaken the intellect, which the child does not bring into the world, like its heart and will, full-grown. The infant suffers and enjoys as keenly, and wills as energetically, at first as ever in its life, but apparently begins and lives for some time, unconscious of a world without as a _not me_. It is purely subjective, _i.e._, feeling its material environment to be a part of itself. As Emerson says:--

"The babe, by its mother, Lies bathed in joy; Glide its hours uncounted; The sun is its toy! Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies!"

Only by intentional help of those around the child can it grow into individual consciousness of its relations with nature in that order which produces the sound intellect. For the intellect is a growth in time, that carries on the nursery exercises of the limbs and affections by the movement plays, and adds those sedentary plays with the series of gifts, which are symbols of all nature in miniature, that objective revelation of God to which the receptive mind answers by thoughts. Thinking is that reaction of the individual mind upon nature which, when it is put into words, produces progressively an image of God, which is the human mind.

The kindergartner's conversation with the children upon their playthings is therefore her most important and delicate work, and one which she cannot do instinctively, but only if she scientifically understands the child on the one hand, and nature in some department on the other. It is impossible in this lecture, perhaps, to demonstrate my meaning. By following out Froebel's own method of playing with the gifts, as suggested in Mrs. Kraus-Boelte's guide or in _The Florence Handbook_, the whole process of the formation of the human understanding by the order of objective nature will become patent, and enable the kindergartner to avoid any great mistakes in her guidance of the children's minds, which guidance should always be tentative, and respectful, to say the least, of their freedom to will. Then we shall have not mechanical work, but orderly, creative work from the children, whose spontaneity is not to be choked; but when it seems to be going in a wrong direction, interrogatively guided. Like Ariel, she must do her spiriting gently, lest she violate the legitimate individuality, and we have Caliban instead of the germ of Prospero.