Part 44

But even in this submissive acceptance there lies the germ of a subsequent transformation. If the child is to believe, he must believe in his own fashion; he must give body and reality to the ideas of Divine majesty and goodness, and of spiritual approach and worship. Hence the way in which children are apt to startle the reverent and amuse the profane by divulging their crude material fancies about things spiritual.

Such materialisation of spiritual conceptions is apt to bring trouble to the young mind. It is all so confusing—this exalted Personage, who nevertheless is quite unlike earthly dignitaries, this all-encompassing and never-failing Presence, which all the time refuses to reveal itself to eye or ear. How much real suffering this may entail in the case of children at once serious and imaginative we shall never know. The description of the boy Waldo, in that strangely fascinating book, _The Story of an African Farm_, kneeling bare-headed in the blazing sun and offering his dinner on an altar to God, may look exaggerated to some; but it is essentially true to some of the deepest instincts of childhood. The child that believes at all, believes intensely, and his belief grows all-commanding and prolific of action.

While, however, it is the common tendency of children passively to adopt their elders’ religious beliefs, merely inventing their own modes of giving effect to them, there is a certain amount of originality exercised in the formation of the beliefs themselves. Stories of independent creations of a religious cult by children are no doubt rare; and this for the very good reason that it needs the greatest force of self-assertion to resist the pressure of the traditional faith on the childish mind. The early recollections of George Sand furnish what is probably the most remarkable instance of childish daring in fashioning a new religion, with its creed and ritual all complete.

Poor little Aurore’s religious difficulties and experiments at solution can only be understood in the light of her confusing surroundings. From her mother—ardent, imaginative, and of a ‘simple and confiding faith’—she had caught some of the glow of a fervent piety. Then she suddenly passed into the chilling air of Nohant, where the grandmother equalled her master Voltaire in cynical contempt of the revered mysteries. The effect of this sudden change of temperature on the warm young heart was, as might have been anticipated, extremely painful. Madame Dupin at once recognised the girl’s temperament, and saw with dismay the leaning to ‘superstition,’ a trait which she disliked none the less for recognising in it a bequest from the despised _grisette_ mother. So she applied herself with all the energy of her strong character to counteract the child’s religious tendencies. Now this might have proved neither a difficult nor lengthy process if she had consistently set her face against all religious observances. But though a disciple of Voltaire, she was also a lady with a conspicuous social position, and had to make her account with the polite world and the _‘bienséances’_. So Aurore was not only allowed but encouraged to attend Mass and to prepare for the ‘First Communion’ like other young ladies of her station. Madame Dupin well knew the risk she was running with so inflammable a material, but she counted on her own sufficiency as a prompt extinguisher of any inconveniently attaching spark of devotion. In this way the young girl underwent the uncommon if not unique experience of a regular religious instruction, and, concurrently with this and from the very hand that had imposed it, a severe training in rational scepticism and contempt for the faith of the vulgar.

Even if Aurore had not been in her inmost heart something of a _dévote_, this parallel discipline in outward conformity and inward ridicule would have been hurtful enough. As it was, it brought into her young life all the pain of contradiction, all the bitterness of enforced rebellion.

The attendance on Mass could hardly have seemed dangerous to Madame Dupin. The old _curé_ of Nohant was not troubled with an excess of reverence. When ordering a procession, in deference to the mandate of his archbishop, he would seize the occasion for expressing his contempt for such mummeries. In his congregation there was a queer old lady, who used to utter her disapproval of the ceremony with a frankness that would have seemed brutal even in a theatre, by exclaiming, ‘Quelle diable de Messe!’ And the object of this criticism, on turning to the congregation to wind up with the familiar _Dominus vobiscum_, would reply in an under-tone, yet loudly enough for Aurore’s ear, ‘Allez au diable!’ That the child attached little solemnity to the ritual is evident from her account to the grandmother of her first visit to the Mass: ‘I saw the _curé_ who took his breakfast standing up before a big table, and turned round on us now and then to call us names’.

The preparation for the ‘First Communion’ was a more serious matter. The girl had now to study the life of Christ, and her heart was touched by the story. ‘The Gospel (she writes) and the divine drama of the life and death of Jesus drew from me in secret torrents of tears.’ Her grandmother, by making now and again ‘a short, dry appeal to her reason,’ succeeded in getting her to reject the notion of miracles and of the divinity of Jesus. But though she was thus unable to reach ‘full faith,’ she resolved _en revanche_ to deny nothing internally. Accordingly she learnt her catechism ‘like a parrot, without seeking to understand it, and without thinking of making fun of its mysteries’. For the rest, she felt a special repugnance towards the confessional. She was able to recall a few small childish faults, such as telling a lie to her mother in order to screen the maid Rose, but feared the list would not satisfy the confessor. Happily, however, he proved to be more lenient than she had anticipated, and dismissed his young penitent with a nominal penance.

The day that makes an epoch in the Catholic girl’s life at length arrived, and Aurore was decked out like the rest of the candidates. The grandmother, having given a finishing touch to her instructions by bidding Aurore, while going through the act of decorum with the utmost decency, ‘not to outrage Divine wisdom and human reason to such an extent as to believe that she was going to eat her Creator,’ accompanied her to the church. It was a hard ordeal. The incongruous appearance of the deistic grandmamma in the place sufficed in itself to throw the girl’s thoughts into disorder. She felt the hollowness of the whole thing, and asked herself whether she and her grandmother were not committing an act of hypocrisy. More than once her repugnance reached such a pitch that she thought of getting up and saying to her grandmother, ‘Enough of this: let us go away’. But relief came in another shape. Going over the scene of the ‘Last Supper’ in her thoughts, she all at once recognised that the words of Jesus, ‘This is my body and my blood,’ were nothing but a metaphor. He was too holy and too great to have wished to deceive his disciples. This discovery of the symbolism of the rite calmed her by removing all feeling of its grotesqueness. She left the Communion table quite at peace. Her contentment gave a new expression to her face, which did not escape the anxious eyes of Madame Dupin: ‘Softened and terrified, divided between the fear of having made me devout and that of having caused me to lie to myself, she pressed me gently to her heart and dropped some tears on my veil’.

It was out of this conflicting and agitating experience, the full sense of the beauty of the Christian faith and the equally full comprehension of the sceptic’s destructive logic, that there was born in Aurore’s imagination the idea of a new private religion with which nobody else should meddle. She gives us the origin of this strange conception clearly enough:—

Since all religion is a fiction (I thought), let us make a story which may be a religion, or a religion which may be a story. I don’t believe in my stories, but they give me just as much happiness as though I did.[337] Besides, should I chance to believe in them from time to time, nobody will know it, nobody will dispel my illusion by proving to me that I am dreaming.

Footnote 337:

She here refers to the stories she had long been accustomed to compose for her own private delectation.

The form and the name of her new divinity came to her in a dream. He was to be called ‘Corambé’. His attributes must be given in her own words:—

He was pure and charitable as Jesus, radiant and beautiful as Gabriel; but it was needful to add a little of the grace of the nymphs and of the poetry of Orpheus. Accordingly he had a less austere form than the God of the Christian, and a more spiritual feeling than those of Homer. And then I was obliged to complete him by investing him on occasion with the guise of a woman, for that which I had up to this time loved the best, and understood the best, was a woman—my mother. And so it was often under the semblance of a woman that he appeared to me. In short, he had no sex, and assumed all sorts of aspects.... Corambé should have all the attributes of physical and moral beauty, the gift of eloquence, the omnipotent charm of the arts—above all, the magic of musical improvisation. I wished to love him as a friend, as a sister, while revering him as a God. I would not be afraid of him, and to this end I desired that he should have some of our errors and weaknesses. I sought that one which could be reconciled with his perfection, and I found it in an excess of indulgence and kindness.

The religious idea took an historical form, and Aurore proceeded to develop the several phases of Corambé’s mundane existence in a series of sacred books or songs. She supposed that she must have composed not less than a thousand of such songs without ever being tempted to write down a line of them. In each of these the deity Corambé, who had become human on touching the earth, was brought into a fresh group of persons. These were all good people; for although there existed wicked ones, one did not see them, but only knew of them by the effects of their malice and madness. Corambé always appears, like Jesus—and one may add, like Buddha—as the beneficent one, spending himself, and suffering persecutions and martyrdom, in the cause of humanity.

This occupation of the imagination developed ‘a kind of gentle hallucination’. Aurore soon learned to betake herself to her hero-divinity for comfort and delight. Even when her peasant companions chattered around her she was able to lose herself in her world of religious romance.

The idea of sacred books was followed by that of a temple and a ritual. For this purpose she chose a little wood in her grandmother’s garden, a perfect thicket of young trees and undergrowth, into which nobody ever penetrated, and which, during the season of leaves, was proof against any spying eye. Here, in a tiny, natural chamber of green, carpeted with a magnificent moss, she proceeded to erect an altar against a tree stem, decking it with shells and other ornaments and crowning it with a wreath of flowers suspended from a branch above. The little priestess, having made her temple, sat down on the moss to consider the question of sacrifices.

To kill animals, or even insects, in order to please him, appeared to me barbarous and unworthy of his ideal kindliness. I persuaded myself to do just the opposite—that is, to restore life and liberty on his altar to all the creatures that I could procure.

Her offering included butterflies, lizards, little green frogs, and birds. These she would put into a box, lay it on the altar, and then open it, ‘after having invoked the good genius of liberty and protection’.

In these mimic rites, hardly removed from genuine childish play, the doubt-agitated girl found repose: ‘I had then delicious reveries, and while seeking the marvellous, which had for me so great an attraction, I began to find the vague idea and the pure feeling of a religion according to my heart’.

But the sweet sanctuary did not long remain inviolate. One day her boy playmate came to look for her, and tracked her to her secret grove. He was awe-struck at the sight, and exclaimed: ‘Ah, miss, the pretty little altar of the _Fête-Dieu_!’ He was for embellishing it still further, but she felt the charm was destroyed.

From the instant that other feet than mine had trodden his sanctuary, Corambé ceased to dwell in it. The dryads and the cherubim deserted it, and it seemed to me as if my ceremonies and my sacrifices were from this time only childishness, that I had not in truth been in earnest. I destroyed the temple with as much care as I had built it; I dug a hole at the foot of the tree, where I buried the garlands, the shells, and all the rustic ornaments, under the ruins of the altar.

This story of Aurore’s religious experiment cannot fail to remind the reader of biography of the child Goethe’s well-known essays in the same direction. The boy’s mind, it will be remembered, had been greatly exercised with the religious problem, first of all under the impression of horror caused by the earthquake at Lisbon, and later from having to listen to accounts of the new sects—Separatists, Moravians, and the rest—who sought a closer communion with the deity than was possible through the somewhat cold ritual of the established religion. Stirred by their example, he tried also to realise a closer approach to the Divine Being. He conceived him, he tells us, as standing in immediate connexion with Nature. So he invented a form of worship in which natural products were to represent the world, and a flame burning over these to symbolise the aspirations of man’s heart. A handsome pyramid-shaped music-stand was chosen for altar, and on the shelves of this the successive stages in the evolution of Nature were to be indicated. The rite was to be carried out at sunrise, the altar-flame to be secured by means of fumigating pastils and a burning-glass. The first performance was a success, but in trying to repeat it the boy-priest omitted to put the pastils into a cup, so the lacquered stand, with its beautiful gold flowers, was disastrously burnt—a _contretemps_ which took away all spirit for new offerings.

In comparing these two instances of childish worship, one is struck perhaps more by their contrast than by their similarity. Each of the two incidents illustrates, no doubt, a true childish aspiration towards the great Unseen, and also an impulse to invent a form of worship which should harmonise with and express the little worshipper’s individual thoughts. But here the resemblance ceases. The boy-priest felt, apparently, nothing of the human side of religion: he was the true precursor of Goethe, the large-eyed man of science and the poet of pantheism, and found his delight in symbolising the orderliness of Nature’s work as a whole, and its Divine purpose and control. Aurore Dupin, on the other hand, approached religion on the human and emotional side, the side which seems more appropriate to her sex. She thought of her deity as intently occupied with humanity and its humble kinsfolk in the sentient world; and she endowed him above all other qualities with generosity and pitifulness, even to excess. Goethe seems to represent the speculative, Aurore the humanitarian, element in the religious impulse of the child.

To follow Aurore into her later religious experiences in the ‘Couvent des Anglaises’ would be clearly to go beyond the limits of these studies of childhood. I hope I may have quoted enough from the first chapters of the autobiography to illustrate not only their deep human and literary interest, but their special value to the psychological student.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

(A) GENERAL WORKS ON CHILD PSYCHOLOGY.

D. Tiedemann, _Memoiren_ (memoirs of a two-year-old son, the biologist F. Tiedemann, b. 1781). English Translation: _Record of Infant Life_, Syracuse, U.S.A. French Translation by B. Perez: _Th. Tiedemann et la science de l’enfant_, 1881.

J. E. Löbisch, _Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele des Kindes_, 1851.

B. Sigismund, _Kind und Welt_, 1856.

C. Darwin, “Biographical Sketch of an Infant,” in _Mind_, vol. ii., 1877, pp. 285-294.

B. Perez, _Les trois premières années de l’enfant_, 1878. English Translation by Miss A. M. Christie (Sonnenschein & Co., London).

With this should be read the following by the same author, _L’Education dès le Berçeau_, 1880; _L’Enfant de trois à sept ans_, 1886.

W. Preyer, _Die Seele des Kindes_, 1882; fourth edition, 1895. English Translation, by H. W. Brown, in two parts (published by Appleton & Co., of New York); also selections from the same under the title _Die geistige Entwicklung in der ersten Kindheit_. English Translation by H. W. Brown (Appleton & Co.).

F. Tracy, _The Psychology of Childhood_ (Boston, U.S., 1893; second edition, 1894).

G. Compayré, _L’Evolution intellectuelle et morale de l’Enfant_, 1893.

M. W. Shinn, _Notes on the Development of a Child_ (Berkeley, U.S.A., 1893-94).

Paola Lombroso, _Saggi di Psicologia del Bambino_ (Roma, 1894).

J. M. Baldwin, _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, 1895.

(B) SPECIAL WORKS.

(1) IMAGINATION AND PLAY.

J. Klaiber, _Das Märchen und die kindliche Phantasie_, 1866.

F. Queyrat, _L’imagination et ses variétés chez l’Enfant_, 1893.

Reference may also be made to the works of Perez and Compayré already named, to Madame Necker’s _L’Education progressive_, to George Sand’s _Histoire de ma vie_, and to the writings of Froebel and his followers on the nature of Play.

(2) THOUGHTS AND REASONINGS.

E. Egger, _Observations et reflexions sur le developpement de l’intelligence et du langage chez les enfants_, 1881.

_Thoughts and Reasonings of Children._ Classified by H. W. Brown. Reprinted from the _Pedagogical Seminary_, vol. ii., No. 3 (Worcester, U.S.A.).

See also the works of Preyer, Perez, and Compayré mentioned above.

Reference may further be made to the inquiries into the contents of children’s minds carried out in Germany and elsewhere: see Bartholmai, “Psychologische Statistik,” in Stoy’s _Allgem. Schulzeitung_, 1871; Lange, “Der Vorstellungskreis unserer sechsjährigen Kleinen,” in Stoy’s _Allgem. Schulzeitung_, 1879; Hartmann, _Analyse des kindischen Gedankenkreises_, 2^e auflage, 1890; Dr. Stanley Hall, ‘Contents of Children’s Minds,’ _Princeton Review_, New Series, vol. II, 1883. p. 249, and _Pedagogical Seminary_, vol. i., No. 2, and _The Contents of Children’s Minds on entering School_, 1894.

(3) LANGUAGE.

A. Keber, _Zur Philosophie der Kindersprache_, 1868; 2^e Aufgabe, 1890.

H. Taine, “On the Acquisition of Language by Children,” _Mind_, ii., 1877, pp. 252-259.

Sir F. Pollock, “An Infant’s Progress in Language,” _Mind_, iii., 1878, pp. 392-401.

F. Schultze, _Die Sprache des Kindes_, 1880.

E. Egger, _Observations et reflexions sur le developpement de l’intelligence et du langage chez les enfants_, 1881.

L. Treitel, _Ueber Sprachstörung und Sprachentwicklung_, Berlin, 1892.

H. Gutzmann, _Des Kindes Sprache und Sprachfehler_, 1894.

J. Dewey, “The Psychology of Infant Language,” _Psychological Review_, 1894.

Other authorities on children’s language are quoted by Preyer in connexion with his own full account of the subject, _Die Seele des Kindes_, 4^e Auflage, Dritter Theil, vi.

(4) FEAR.

Reference can be made here to Locke’s _Thoughts on Education_, Rousseau’s _Emile_, and to the works of Madame Necker, George Sand, Preyer, Perez, and Compayré, already named.

(5) MORAL CHARACTERISTICS.

These are dealt with by Locke, Rousseau, Madame Necker, by Perez and Compayré in the works already named, also by Perez in his volume _Le Caractère de l’enfant à l’homme_, and by most writers on Education. The subject of Children’s Lies is more fully dealt with by G. Stanley Hall, in _The American Journal of Psychology_, vol. iii., 1, and _The Pedagogical Seminary_, vol. i., 2, and by G. Compayré, _L’Evolution intell. et morale de l’enfant_, chap. xiv.

(6) ART.

B. Perez, _L’art et la poésie chez l’enfant_, 1888.

(7) DRAWING.

Corrado Ricci, _L’arte dei Bambini_ (Bologna, 1887).

J. Passy, “Note sur les dessins d’enfants,” _Revue Philosophique_, 1891.

Earl Barnes, “A Study of Children’s Drawings,” _Pedagogical Seminary_, vol. ii., No. 3, p. 455 ff.

The names of other books on child-psychology may be found in Tracy’s volume, _The Psychology of Childhood_, p. 162 ff.; in the _Handbook of the Illinois Society for Child Study_, 1895; in B. Hartmann’s article, “Alterstypen,” in Rein’s _Encyclop. Handbuch der Pädagogik_, Band i., p. 49; and in C. Shubert’s Essay, “Elternfragen,” in Rein’s _Aus dem pädagog. Universitätsseminar zu Jena_, 1894.

INDEX.

A.

Abstraction, abstract ideas, beginnings of, 443; growth of, 483. Acting, relation of, to play, 36, 326; as early form of art, 323; first attempts at, 434, 496. _See_ Dramatic representation. Activity, action. _See_ Movement. Adjectives, first use of, 171, 427. Adornment, child’s instinct of, 318. _See_ Dress. Æsthetic aspect of child, 2; feelings of child, 300, 397, 409, 451. _See_ Art. Affirmation, sign of, 417. After-images, child’s ideas of, 102, 465. Altruism, germs of, in child, 242. _See_ Sympathy. Amiel, H. F., 3. Andree, R., 337 note, 338, 345 note, 348 note, 352 note, 379, 381 note. Anger, early manifestations of, 232, 407, 432. Animal, child compared with, 5; ideas of child respecting, 123; dread of musical sounds by, 195; fear of uncaused movements by, 205, 220; child’s fear of, 207, 433; child’s ill-treatment of, 239; his sympathy with, 247, 460, 475, 485; recognition of portraits by, 309; care of body by, 318; child’s mode of drawing, 372; his liking for, 450. Animism, of nature-man, 104; traces of, in child-thought, 480. Anthropocentric ideas of child, 82, 98, 102, 427. Anthropomorphic ideas of children, 79. Anti-social tendencies of child, 230. Antithesis, child’s use of, 174, 429, 442. Argument. _See_ Dialectic. Arms, child’s manner of drawing, 348; treatment of, in profile representation, 362. Art; art-impulse of child, 298; first responses to natural beauty, 300; pleasure of light and colour, 300; germ of æsthetic feeling for form, 303; feeling for flowers, 305; feeling for scenery, 306; rudimentary appreciation of art, 307; effects of music, 308; interpretation of pictures, 309; understanding of stories, 314; realism of child, 314; attitude towards dramatic spectacle, 315; feeling for comedy and tragedy, 316; beginnings of art-production, 318; love of adornment, 318; grace in action, 321; relation of art to play, 321, 326; germ of imitative art, 323; invention, 325; roots of artistic impulse, 327. Artfulness of children, 272. Articulation, first rudimentary, 135; transition to true, 138; defects of early, 148, 418; process of, 154; growth of, 158, 416, 427, 439, 467. _See_ Language. Assertion, child’s manner of making, 457, 471. _See_ Sentence. Assimilation. _See_ Similarity. —— phonetic, 156. Association of ideas, in imaginative transformation of objects, 32; seen in extension of names, 164; first manifestations of, 405. Assonance, in early vocalisation, 137.

B.