Part 9

Both fancy and understanding are developed in time by words. We all know how children are waked up and delighted by Mother Goose absurdities, and still more by fairy stories that seem to set at naught the facts and override the laws of nature. It is a stubborn fact, of which materialistic positivists afford us no explanation, and which I commend to the consideration of Mr. Mansell, and whoever else talks of the limitations of religious thought. And I think it will be found that children who are talked to by Mother Goose and fairy-story tellers learn to talk more quickly than others, and have more vivacity of mind generally, with a power of entering into the minds of others commensurate with their sensibility, and justifying the human sympathies which are often a burden to the unimaginative, who are nevertheless kind. A great deal of the misunderstanding of others which causes unnecessary pain and social bitterness, checking generous furtherance of one another's good purposes, arises from want of saliency of imagination, preventing us from being able to put ourselves in another's place. And of course it is not without the highest reason that the Father of our Spirits has given fancy the advantage of the first start in our mental process. That fancy precedes understanding in our psychological history cannot be denied by any nice observer. I have known some parents who would not use Mother Goose or fairy stories with their children, but substituted therefor amusing experiments in physics,--the metamorphosis of insects and the classification of plants according to their differences. Their children became scientific when they grew up, were fine mathematicians, and were interested in mechanical inventions and natural history; but took comparatively little interest in political and moral problems, though not at all wanting in the social and patriotic affections, which also characterized their parents, who were themselves brought up on the imaginative system not well modified by studies of nature's phenomena, which was probably the reason of their strong reaction from the imaginative method.

But I have known as intimately some other parents who made predominant, perhaps extreme use of Mother Goose and fairy literature. Their children much earlier and more completely got command of all the resources of language, had a tendency to art, especially literary art, in their own activity, and were earlier interested in human history, and all varieties of human experience reflected in the literature of nations; but perhaps were slower in attaining practical ability for life's labors. Each direction of education has its advantages and disadvantages in the religious relation, and I think it is the better way to mingle them, especially at the early period of the kindergarten, where the objective point is to cultivate the understanding, which needs that we should appreciate the facts and order of external nature as the exponent of God's wisdom. This will chasten and give substantiality to the creative action of the human fancy, which is never to be snubbed, but gently entreated to be reasonable, or we shall have Caliban instead of Ariel or Prospero, as I have said before.

I cannot find out whether Froebel has anywhere expressed himself distinctly on this point. There are certainly no grotesque images and no fairy stories in the mother's prattle with her children over pictures, and in the out-door walks which are suggested in the _Mütterspiele und Köse-Lieder_; but children are led to recognize the poetical symbolism of nature, and its invisible and impalpable substances and forces; the invisible forces of air, heat, and light are used to lead them out from the world of matter towards the more substantial spiritual world where the soul meets and communes with God, the omnipresent Spirit to be apprehended only by the spirit within us, whose organs are ideas.[9]

In the kindergarten, as in the nursery, children learn language by using it empirically. To utilize their love of talking as they play is what is first to be done by the kindergartner. The things seen and done give a clear definition and precise significance to the words used, which become the stepping-stones of the mind, by which it mounts up from the sensuous ground of the understanding into the heaven of invention and imaginative art, plastic and heroic; and thence to communion with God. But before children are put to reading, before proceeding from things through thoughts, and from spiritual experiences through ideas to their vocal signs, and from vocal signs to their written or printed representations, it is wise to consider the signs themselves. I do not mean to go deeply into etymologies or anything that is abstract. It is not doing so, for instance, to ask children what is the difference between the words _see_ and _look_. (Can you see without looking? Can you look without seeing?) It gives precision to the understanding to discriminate what are often called synonymes, but which seldom mean precisely the same thing, unless, in our _potpourri_ of a language they are mere translations, as for instance _morsel_ and _bit_, respective derivatives from the Latin _morsum_ and the English _bitten_. The little English-speaking child should not be troubled with the derivation of _morsel_, but is pleased to be called to notice that of _bit_. We must be guided here by Froebel's rule of proceeding from the known to the unknown, and not endeavor to plunge children into the unknown without a clue.

That children understand and use figurative language readily, shows that without going out of their childish world we can define symbolic expression to some degree, and this is a means of regulating fancy. But I must take another opportunity to speak of the method of doing this.[10] I can now only affirm that unless children could signify by words not merely their impressions of material things and their correlations, but their feelings and thoughts, it would be impossible for the religious education to be begun in the nursery, or to be carried on in the kindergarten, as Froebel proposes it shall be.

It is only by naming to the child his own intuition of creative being or cause, or rather by leading the child to name it, that the understanding is started upon the religious thinking which is necessary to keep pure from superstition his religious feeling, while his blind sense of God is changing from an undefined intuition of the heart into a definite thought of the mind, which change Froebel would have take place very early. But this is the most delicate region of consciousness to enter, and we must take great care that we do not profane instead of consecrating the process by what we do and say. Words that are adequate and living names for the spiritual intuition of a very present God, generate spiritual thoughts in natural relation with them. And this reminds me of a circumstance in the mental history of Laura Bridgeman, illustrative of what I mean.

This poor child was deprived, when two years old, of her sight and hearing, and partially of taste and smell, by the scarlet fever, which left her but one avenue of knowledge of material things,--the sense of touch. But through that the practical benevolence of Dr. Howe won a way to her imprisoned spirit, and opened communication of thought with her by means of words; and she even learned to read in the raised type for the blind. The whole story is immensely interesting and important to any teacher. She had been taught enough of the properties of matter to be able to work on and with _things_, and moral science could be taught her through her own and others' activity; but how was she to be taught about God and spiritual things? Dr. Howe reserved to himself to speak to her of God, forbidding all others to do so, and watched for his opportunity.

My sister Sophia went over to the asylum to model Laura's bust, and one day asked her teacher (who was with her always) to translate into spoken words the conversation that she saw was passing between them by means of the hand language. Very soon occurred the following:--

_Laura._ I want to go to walk.

_Teacher._ You cannot go to-day, because it rains.

_Laura._ Who makes it rain?

Instead of making a direct reply, the teacher went on to explain how moisture exhaled from the earth by the action of the sun, and was collected in masses which were called clouds, and when the clouds were so full as to be heavier than the air, it fell to the earth in drops of rain.

Laura said, reverently, "God is very full."

The teacher was startled, and said, "Who told you about God?"

_Laura._ No one told me. The Doctor is going to tell me about him when I know more words. But I think about God all times.

The teacher said to my sister, "This is very important," and went to tell the Doctor, who was a good deal moved, but found himself at somewhat of a loss. That evening he came to a little gathering at our house to talk about it. He said that nearly a year before, if not longer, Laura had come upon the word _God_ in her reading, and immediately stopped and asked the meaning of the word. According to his directions, she was then sent to him, and he was so anxious not to do any harm, especially not to frighten her with the idea of Infinite Power (which is the main element of our conception of God, even eighteen hundred years after Christ's manifestation of Infinite _Love_), that he was embarrassed, and said to her that she did not yet know other words enough to explain the word _God_, but when she had learned more words, he would tell her, and meanwhile he wished she would not ask any one else. But now he was pondering what was the best way to proceed. I suggested that perhaps Laura could teach him more than he could teach her about God, and asked what was the sentence in which she had found the word. But this he had never known. It was then suggested that probably the word had explained itself, for no sentence could possibly contain the word, not even in an exclamation, that would not suggest to such a perfectly clear thinking mind as Laura had always shown, the fact of supreme love or wisdom. The company present proved this by trying to make sentences. I do not know what he finally concluded to do or say to Laura. I think certainly that the true way would have been to have drawn her out, and according to what she said or seemed to need, to have shaped whatever teaching he had to give, taking great care not to negate any of her positive assertions; for we could not doubt that God was manifesting himself to the imagination of her heart, if not yet in the forms of the human understanding.

If I had known how to use the hand language, I would have solicited the privilege of going to learn what this hermit soul could have told me before it was darkened by our traditional theology, which did not originate in children,--

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

but in the minds of old sinners who had lost the original purity of soul that "sees God." "I think about God all times!" How interesting it would be to know exactly what she thought! That it was nothing terrific or painful was evident from her habitual mood, which was even joyous. So careful had the Doctor been to educate every bodily and mental activity, that she had none of that discouragement, inelasticity, and indolence of mind, which comes of want of success in childish effort. A genial, educating assistance was always around her, but careful not to weaken her by doing anything for her that she could learn to do for herself. Obstacles, therefore, only stimulated her efforts, and so delightful was her sense of overcoming them, that, for instance, she would laugh exultingly when sewing if her thread became knotted, or if in anything she was doing there was some little difficulty to be surmounted. Her faith in herself seemed never to have been broken; but she rested on the fulcrum of Infinite God, in whom she "lives and moves and has her being."

The only thing we ought to do in the religious nurture of childhood is to _preserve_ this faith which comes from the child's seeing God even more clearly and certainly than it can see outward things. See to it that you use language so as more clearly to define and not to blot out the divine vision, as old Dr. Barnard's cocked hat and black silk gown and seat in the clouds eclipsed the sweet face with which my Creator seemed to own me as his child, as I told you in my last lecture.

Another mistake that was made in my religious education was during a visit that I made to a great-aunt when I was five years old, and was taught to say the Lord's prayer by the servant who put me to bed. I got the idea that some unknown evil might happen to me in my sleep if I did not do this, and was also told that God would be displeased with me if I thought about anything else when I was saying it. But I was involuntarily conscious of having my mind full of images, while the words of the prayer were empty vocables. In order to prevent the intruding thoughts, I would try to rush through the words quickly, going back to the beginning over and over again. But this artificial duty was not associated with the instruction of my mother, who was in general very happy in what she said to me about God, dwelling on his goodness, referring to it everything delightful, making Sunday a day of quiet but constant enjoyment, letting us paint, and cut paper, with other little amusements, devoting herself to making us happy, while the rest of the week she was busy; for she kept a large school, and Sunday was, as she often said, her only and blessed day of rest. Long after, at a time of religious controversy and so-called revival, I was immensely aided by hearing my mother say to a young aunt of mine who affirmed that St. Paul, in saying that we must pray without ceasing was fanatically unreasonable: "Yes, if praying meant saying over prayers; but spiritual prayers mean a devotional attitude of mind towards God which we can have whatever we are doing."

This sentence seemed to pour light into a shady place.

"Don't you _say prayers_, mama?" I said to her when aunt was gone.

"Not when I am alone," she said; "for God sees my thoughts and feelings, and knows that I love him, and always want his help."

My mother had nothing of the martinet about her. She took it for granted that upon the whole we wanted to do what was right. She was not apt to give the worst, but the best interpretation to doubtful phenomena. She believed that to treat a child with generous confidence invoked generosity and truthfulness, and what was better than all the rest, she did not _talk down_ to her children, but rather drew them up to her own mental and moral level; and interlarded stories from Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ and the Scriptures with stories of the kind and noble deeds of real people around us. (See Appendix.)

Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consolation for all calamity, and always very naturally expressed. She more than corrected her first mistake and inadequate talk with me about my Creator, by telling me the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I was yet so very young that my fancy clothed her words with grotesque images, but on the whole did better justice to the _spirit_ of the emigration and the ultimate results it has worked out for the world than the exact facts that transpired in history. What I gained from my self-created mythology was that my ancestors knew themselves to be God's children, whom neither tyrannizing king nor priest had any right to prevent from going to him in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as their consciences understood it, they left home and country and all the comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail vessel to be driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at imminent peril from the waves below, which would have swallowed them up, had not God, who loved them, approved what they were doing, guided the ship (by a power stronger than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow opening of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still seem to see them streaming along, a procession of fair women in white robes as _sisters_ (for so I had interpreted the word _ancestors_, who strangely enough were all named _Ann_). I still seem to see these holy women kneel down in the snow under the trees of the forest, and thank God for their safety from the perils of the sea; and then go to work in the sense of his very present help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters from the weather with the branches of the trees. Among these rude buildings my mother took pains to tell me that they built a schoolhouse where all the children were to be taught to read the Bible.

There is nothing for which I thank my mother and my God more than for this grand impression of all-inspiring love to God, and of all-conquering duty to posterity, thus made on my childish imagination, and its association with the idea of personal freedom and independent action. It never could have been made except by one who herself had faith in God, and believed that he had made all men free to come to him, and also that the mother was his first appointed mouthpiece. The fanciful images which were the effect of the shortcomings of my ignorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as open to accept then as now; namely, that God is my Father, the Father of all souls, from whom no one has a right to shut off another.

That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the "Ann Sisters" building, taught me as no mere words ever could have done, that it was the most acceptable service to God to educate all his children to know him and his works. That first idea of human duty I have never outgrown, but still believe universal education is the true culture of the American people, the reasonable service they owe to him who called them out of the Old World to be a nation of individuals. There was nothing fatal, therefore, in that first false notion of God (which I received for a time), though it was for a time more of an evil to me than it would have been to a child less subjective, or of more lively perception of things without. Liveliness of perception brings so many things before the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it undoubtedly prevents the stereotyping of many a single impression and fancy that does injustice to spiritual truths; and false impressions, unless strongly associated with terror or some other morbid sensibility, do not take hold of a child so strongly as the images that are consistent with the eternal laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human face divine with which I had instantaneously clothed my intuition of God, and which, notwithstanding its temporary eclipse, has haunted me all my life.

It is very encouraging to the educator to know that the innocent soul of childhood has so much more affinity with truth than with falsehood, because the best and most careful educator cannot sequestrate children entirely from false impressions. But what finds no echo in the spirit passes off, unless the mind is shocked into passivity by fear or pain. When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority to passive impressions, and makes use of them as materials for imaginative production. It is, therefore, desirable to keep children employed in gentle activity which has successful results, and happy in the midst of attractive natural surroundings, by which God is working with us in the same purpose of educating the child, allowing us to be his partners, as it were, in this work, because it educates us. It is not uncommon to hear persons say that they would like to begin life all over again with the knowledge they have gained from their life-experience. This we can all do if we will in imagination really _live with our children_, as Froebel says, whose motto explains what Christ meant when he bids us to be converted and become little children.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Idea_ is a word I always use in the sense of _insight_, as Plato uses it, rather than in the sense of _notion_, as Locke uses it.

[10] See note A in Appendix, and the Record of a School.

LECTURE VI.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.

PART FIRST.

I SAID in my last lecture that had I possessed the power to talk in Laura Bridgeman's hand, I should have begged Dr. Howe to let me have some conversation with her after she said that she "thought about God all times"; not that I felt that I could teach her, but that I might learn what God had taught her concerning Himself. It was a wonderful chance for a most important psychological observation of the innocent mind of childhood, and would have afforded, doubtless, a luminous illustration of the truth that the human soul is also a divine personality justifying the method initiated by Froebel of conversing with the children in the Socratic manner.

But already in my lifetime I had had an opportunity for psychological observation, made under circumstances perhaps still more favorable for getting evidence of the importance of a very early recognition of the Heavenly Father's name in the formation in a healthy manner of the human understanding and the development of the reason, verifying the declaration which Froebel has made the corner-stone of his system; namely, that though a child is the extreme opposite of God, contrasting as effect to cause, as absolute want to infinite supply, all these terms are connected--_conciliated_--into unity, by Love and Thought, which must recognize each other, and whose loss of equal companionship is a

"Grief, past all balsam and relief,"

as Mr. Emerson has sung.

I have somewhere, very careful memoranda, made at the time, which I have unfortunately mislaid, but I will present from present recollection as well as I can the whole psychological observation, though I am aware that I shall leave out many little things said and done which were perhaps not unimportant links in the chain.

Before I begin, I will observe that I tell it to the class to show the difference between talking to and conversing with children, and to illustrate several truths.

First, There is an innate Idea, not as a thought but as a feeling, given to every child, of an all-embracing Love (named by Jesus, Father), one in substance with the deepest consciousness of self;

Second, That this Idea becomes a child's personal and individual perception only when he has a realizable name for it;

Third, That such a name is not an empty vocable, a mere movement of air, but a sign, to which the intuition of his heart gives vital meaning;

Fourth, That an adequate name for GOD is the axis of the intellect, and the revolution of thought around it gives perfect globular form and solidity to the mind, balancing the centripetal force of individual self-assertion with the centripetal force of a Divine Love, comprehending all Being. Before GOD was named to and by this child of whom I am about to speak, you will see that he was a dreary little chaos "without form and void." After he had learned to utter intelligently the name of a Heavenly Father he was what I am going to tell you.