Parents and children Charlotte M. Mason 867 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Parents and children

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Parents and children

Author: Charlotte M. Mason

Release date: December 17, 2023 [eBook #72445]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Kegan Paul, 1897

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72445

Credits: Carol Brown, Tim Lindell, Turgut Dincer and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARENTS AND
CHILDREN ***

PARENTS AND CHILDREN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
HOME EDUCATION: A Course of Lectures to Ladies.
By Charlotte M. Mason. Second Edition, Revised and
Enlarged. Demy 8vo, 6s.
STUDIES IN ENGLISH FOR THE USE OF MODERN
SCHOOLS. By H. C. Bowen. Eleventh Thousand.
Small crown 8vo, 1s. 6d.
SIMPLE ENGLISH POEMS. English Literature for
Junior Classes. By H. C. Bowen. 3s. Parts I., II., and
III. 6d. each. Part IV. . 1s.
ENGLISH GRAMMAR FOR BEGINNERS. By H. C.
Bowen. Fcap. 8vo, 1s.
ON THE STUDY OF WORDS. By the late Archbishop
Trench. Revised by A. L. Mayhew. Twenty-fifth
Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 5s.
ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT. By the late
Archbishop Trench. Revised by A. L. Mayhew.
Fifteenth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 5s.
THE MODERN FRENCH READER. Edited by C.
Cassal, LL.D., and Theodore Karcher, LL.B. Junior
Course. Nineteenth Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. Senior
Course. Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo, 4s. Senior
Course and Glossary, in One Vol. Crown 8vo, 6s.
PRACTICAL FRENCH GRAMMAR. By Mortimer de
Larmoyer, Professor of the French Language and
Literature at the Crystal Palace School. Crown 8vo.
New Edition, in One Vol., 3s. 6d. Two Parts, 2s. 6d.
each.

London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Lᵀᴰ

P a r e n t s and C h i l d r e n

A SEQUEL TO

“ H O M E E D U C AT I O N ”

BY

CHARLOTTE M. MASON

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. Lᵀᴰ

PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1897

The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press

TO THE MEMBERS OF

THE PARENTS’ NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL UNION

THIS VOLUME

is inscribed by the author
as an expression of the affection and
reverence with which their
efforts inspire her

Ambleside,
November 1896.

P R E FA C E
The following essays have appeared in the Parents’ Review, and were
addressed, from time to time, to a body of parents who are making a
practical study of the principles of education—the “Parents’ National
Educational Union.” The present volume is a sequel to Home Education
(Kegan Paul & Co.), a work which was the means of originating this Union
of Parents. It is not too much to say that the Parents’ Union exists to
advance, with more or less method and with more or less steadfastness, a
definite school of educational thought of which the two main principles are
—the recognition of the physical basis of habit, i.e. of the material side of
education; and of the inspiring and formative power of the Idea, i.e. of the
immaterial, or spiritual, side of education. These two guiding principles,
covering as they do the whole field of human nature, should enable us to
deal rationally with all the complex problems of education; and the object
of the following essays is, not to give an exhaustive application of these
principles—the British Museum itself would hardly contain all the volumes
needful for such an undertaking—but to give an example or a suggestion,
here and there, as to how such and such an habit may be formed, such and
such a formative idea be implanted and fostered. The intention of the
volume will account to the reader for what may seem a want of connected
and exhaustive treatment of the subject, and for the iteration of the same
principles in various connections. The author ventures to hope that the
following hints and suggestions will not prove the less practically useful to
busy parents, because they rest on profound educational principles.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THEORY

CHAPTER I
page
the family 3

CHAPTER II
parents as rulers 12

CHAPTER III
parents as inspirers (part i) 20

CHAPTER IV
parents as inspirers (part ii ) 29

CHAPTER V
parents as inspirers (part iii) 39

CHAPTER VI
parents as inspirers (part iv ) 48

CHAPTER VII
the parent as schoolmaster 58

CHAPTER VIII
the culture of character (part i) 66

CHAPTER IX
the culture of character (part ii ) 79

CHAPTER X
bible lessons 88

CHAPTER XI
faith and duty (part i) 96

CHAPTER XII
faith and duty (part ii ) 111

CHAPTER XIII
faith and duty (part iii) 122

CHAPTER XIV
the heroic impulse 134

CHAPTER XV
is it possible? 143

CHAPTER XVI

discipline 160

CHAPTER XVII
sensations and feelings (part i) 169

CHAPTER XVIII
sensations and feelings (part ii ) 181

CHAPTER XIX
“what is truth?” 192

CHAPTER XX
show cause why 201

CHAPTER XXI
herbartian pedagogics 211

CHAPTER XXII
the teaching of the “parents’ national educational union”
(part i) 220

CHAPTER XXIII
the teaching of the “parents’ national educational union”
(part ii ) 228

CHAPTER XXIV
whence and whither (part i) 242

CHAPTER XXV
whence and whither (part ii ) 250

CHAPTER XXVI
the great recognition 260

CHAPTER XXVII
the eternal child 271

BOOK II

ESSAYS IN PRACTICAL EDUCATION

CHAPTER I
the philosopher at home 283

CHAPTER II
“attention” 303

CHAPTER III
an educational experiment 312

CHAPTER IV
dorothy elmore’s achievement: a forecast 320

CHAPTER V
consequences 346

CHAPTER VI
mrs. sedley’s tale 355

CHAPTER VII
ability 367

CHAPTER VIII
poor mrs. jumeau! 376

CHAPTER IX
“a happy christmas to you!” 386

CHAPTER X
parents in council (part i) 395

CHAPTER XI
parents in council (part ii ) 405

CHAPTER XII
a hundred years after 413

note 429

BOOK I
THEORY

PARENTS AND CHILDREN

CHAPTER I

THE FAMILY
“The family is the unit of the nation.”—F. D. Maurice.

It is probable that no other educational thinker has succeeded in affecting
parents so profoundly as did Rousseau. Emile is little read now, but how
many current theories of the regimen proper for children have there their
unsuspected source? Everybody knows—and his contemporaries knew it
better than we—that Jean Jacques Rousseau had not enough sterling
character to warrant him to pose as an authority on any subject, least of all
on that of education. He sets himself down a poor thing, and we see no
cause to reject the evidence of his Confessions. We are not carried away by
the charm of his style; his “forcible feebleness” does not dazzle us. No man
can say beyond that which he is, and there is a want of grit in his
philosophic theories that removes most of them from the category of
available thought.
But Rousseau had the insight to perceive one of those patent truths
which, somehow, it takes a genius to discover; and, because truth is indeed
prized above rubies, the perception of that truth gave him rank as a great
teacher. “Is Jean Jacques also among the prophets?” people asked, and ask
still; and that he had thousands of fervent disciples amongst the educated
parents of Europe, together with the fact that his teaching has filtered into
many a secluded home of our own day, is answer enough. Indeed, no other
educationalist has had a tithe of the influence exercised by Rousseau. Under

the spell of his teaching, people in the fashionable world, like that Russian
Princess Galitzin, forsook society, and went off with their children to some
quiet corner where they could devote every hour of the day, and every
power they had, to the fulfilment of the duties which devolve upon parents.
Courtly mothers retired from the world, sometimes even left their husbands,
to work hard at the classics, mathematics, sciences, that they might with
their own lips instruct their children. “What else am I for?” they asked; and
the feeling spread that the bringing up of the children was the one work of
primary importance for men and women.
Whatever extravagance he had seen fit to advance, Rousseau would still
have found a following, because he had chanced to touch a spring that
opened many hearts. He was one of the few educationalists who made his
appeal to the parental instincts. He did not say, “We have no hope of the
parents, let us work for the children!” Such are the faint-hearted and
pessimistic things we say to-day. What he said was, in effect, “Fathers and
mothers, this is your work, and you only can do it. It rests with you, parents
of young children, to be the saviours of society unto a thousand generations.
Nothing else matters. The avocations about which people weary themselves
are as foolish child’s play compared with this one serious business of
bringing up our children in advance of ourselves.”
People listened, as we have seen; the response to his teaching was such a
letting out of the waters of parental enthusiasm as has never been known
before nor since. And Rousseau, weak and little worthy, was a preacher of
righteousness in this, that he turned the hearts of the fathers to the children,
and so far made ready a people prepared for the Lord. But alas! having
secured the foundation, he had little better than wood, hay, and stubble to
offer to the builders.
Rousseau succeeded, as he deserved to succeed, in awaking many
parents to the binding character, the vast range, the profound seriousness of
parental obligations. He failed, and deserved to fail, as he offered his own
crude conceits by way of an educational code. But his success is very
cheering. He perceived that God placed the training of every child in the
hands of two, a father and a mother; and the response to his teaching proved
that, as the waters answer to the drawing of the moon, so do the hearts of
parents rise to the idea of the great work committed to them.

Though it is true, no doubt, that every parent is conscious of unwritten
laws, more or less definite and noble according to his own status, yet an
attempt, however slight, to codify these laws may be interesting to parents.
“The family is the unit of the nation.” This pregnant saying suggests
some aspects of the parents’ calling. From time to time, in all ages of the
world, communistic societies have arisen, sometimes for the sake of co-
operation in a great work, social or religious, more recently by way of
protest against inequalities of condition; but, in every case, the fundamental
rule of such societies is, that the members shall have all things in common.
We are apt to think, in our careless way, that such attempts at communistic
association are foredoomed to failure. But that is not the case. In the United
States, perhaps because hired labour is less easy to obtain than it is with us,
they appear to have found a congenial soil, and there many well-regulated
communistic bodies flourish. There are failures, too, many and disastrous,
and it appears that these may usually be traced to one cause, a government
enfeebled by the attempt to combine democratic and communistic
principles, to dwell together in a common life, while each does what is right
in his own eyes. A communistic body can thrive only under a vigorous and
absolute rule.
A favourite dream of socialism is—or was until the idea of collectivism
obtained—that each State of Europe should be divided into an infinite
number of small self-contained communes. Now, it sometimes happens that
the thing we desire is already realised, had we eyes to see. The family is,
practically, a commune. In the family the undivided property is enjoyed by
all the members in common, and, in the family there is equality of social
condition, with diversity of duties. In lands where patriarchal practices still
obtain, the family merges into the tribe, and the head of the family is the
chief of the tribe—a very absolute sovereign indeed. In our own country,
families are usually small, parents and their immediate offspring, with the
attendants and belongings which naturally gather to a household, and, let it
not be forgotten, form part of the family. The smallness of the family tends
to obscure its character, and we see no force in the phrase at the head of this
chapter; we do not perceive that, if the unit of the nation is the natural
commune, the family, then is the family the social microcosm, pledged to
carry on within itself all the functions of the State, with the delicacy,
precision, and fulness of detail proper to work done on a small scale.

It by no means follows from this communistic view of the family that the
domestic policy should be a policy of isolation; on the contrary, it is not too
much to say, that a nation is civilised in proportion as it is able to establish
close and friendly relations with other nations, and that, not with one or
two, but with many; and, conversely, that a nation is barbarous in proportion
to its isolation; and does not a family decline in intelligence and virtue when
from generation to generation it “keeps itself to itself”?
Again, it is probable that a nation is healthy in proportion as it has its
own proper outlets, its colonies and dependencies, which it is ever solicitous
to include in the national life. So of the nation in miniature, the family; the
struggling families at ‘the back,’ the orphanage, the mission, the necessitous
of our acquaintance, are they not for the sustenance of the family in the
higher life?
But it is not enough that the family commune maintain neighbourly
relations with other such communes, and towards the stranger within the
gates. The family is the unit of the nation; and the nation is an organic
whole, a living body, built up, like the natural body, of an infinite number of
living organisms. It is only as it contributes its quota towards the national
life that the life of the family is complete. Public interests must be shared,
public work taken up, the public welfare cherished—in a word, its integrity
with the nation must be preserved, or the family ceases to be part of a living
whole, and becomes positively injurious, as decayed tissue in the animal
organism.
Nor are the interests of the family limited to those of the nation. As it is
the part of the nation to maintain wider relations, to be in touch with all the
world, to be ever in advance in the great march of human progress, so is this
the attitude which is incumbent on each unit of the nation, each family, as
an integral part of the whole. Here is the simple and natural realisation of
the noble dream of Fraternity: each individual attached to a family by ties
of love where not of blood; the families united in a federal bond to form the
nation; the nations confederate in love and emulous in virtue, and all,
nations and their families, playing their several parts as little children about
the feet and under the smile of the Almighty Father. Here is the divine order
which every family is called upon to fulfil; a little leaven leaveneth the
whole lump, and, therefore, it matters infinitely that every family should
realise the nature and the obligations of the family bond. As water cannot

rise above its source, neither can we live at a higher level than that of the
conception we form of our place and use in life. Let us ask the question—
has this, of regarding all education and all civil and social relations from the
standpoint of the family, any practical outcome? So much so, that perhaps
there is hardly a problem of life for which it does not contain the solution.
For example:—What shall we teach our children? Is there one subject that
claims our attention more than another? Yes, there is a subject or class of
subjects which has an imperative moral claim upon us. It is the duty of the
nation to maintain relations of brotherly kindness with other nations;
therefore, it is the duty of every family, as an integral part of the nation, to
be able to hold brotherly speech with the families of other nations as
opportunities arise; therefore, to acquire the speech of neighbouring nations
is not only to secure an inlet of knowledge and a means of culture, but is a
duty of that higher morality (the morality of the family) which aims at
universal brotherhood; therefore, every family would do well to cultivate
two languages besides the mother tongue, even in the nursery.
Again; a fair young Englishwoman was staying with her mother at a
German Kurhaus. They were the only English people present, and probably
forgot that the Germans are better linguists than we. The young lady sat
through the long meals with her book, hardly interrupting her reading to eat,
and addressing no more than one or two remarks to her mother, as—“I
wonder what that mess is!” or, “How much longer shall we have to sit with
these tiresome people?” Had she remembered that no family can live to
itself, that she and her mother represented England, were England for that
little German community, she would have imitated the courteous greetings
which the German ladies bestowed on their neighbours.
But we must leave further consideration of this great subject, and
conclude with a striking passage from Mr. Morley’s ‘Appreciation’ of
Emile. “Education slowly came to be thought of in connection with the
family. The improvement of ideas upon education was only one phase of the
great general movement towards the restoration of the family, which was so
striking a spectacle in France after the middle of the century. Education now
came to comprehend the whole system of the relations between parents and
their children, from earliest infancy to maturity. The direction of such wider
feeling about these relations tended strongly towards an increased closeness
in them, more intimacy, and a more continuous suffusion of tenderness and

long attachment.” His labours in this great cause, “the restoration of the
family,” give Rousseau a claim upon the gratitude and respect of mankind.
It has proved a lasting, solid work. To this day, family relations in France
are more gracious, more tender, more close and more inclusive, than they
are with us. They are more expansive too, leading to generally benign and
friendly behaviour; and so strong and satisfying is the family bond, that the
young people find little necessity to ‘fall in love.’ The mother lays herself
out for the friendship of her young daughters, who respond with entire
loyalty and devotion; and, Zola notwithstanding, French maidens are
wonderfully pure, simple, and sweet, because their affections are
abundantly satisfied.
Possibly “the restoration of the family” is a labour that invites us here in
England, each within the radius of our own hearth; for there is little doubt
that the family bond is more lax amongst us than it was two or three
generations ago. Perhaps nowhere is family life of more idyllic loveliness
than where we see it at its best in English homes. But the wise ever find
some new thing to learn. Though a nation, as an individual, must act on the
lines of its own character, and we are, on the whole, well content with our
English homes, yet we might learn something from the inclusiveness of the
French family, where mother-in-law and father-in-law, aunt and cousins,
widow and spinster, are cherished, and a hundred small offices devised for
dependants who would be in the way in an English home. The result is that
the children have a wider range for the practice of the thousand sweet
attentions and self-restraints which make home life lovely. No doubt the
medal has its obverse; there is probably much in French home life which we
should shrink from; nevertheless, it offers object lessons which we should
do well to study. Again, where family life is most beauteous with us, is not
the family a little apt to become self-centred and self-sufficient, rather than
to cultivate that expansiveness towards other families which is part of the
family code of our neighbours?

CHAPTER II

PARENTS AS RULERS

Let us continue our consideration of the family as the nation in miniature,
with the responsibilities, the rights, and the requirements of the nation. The
parents represent the “Government”; but, here, the government is ever an
absolute Monarchy, conditioned very loosely by the law of the land, but
very closely by that law more or less of which every parent bears engraved
on his conscience. Some attain the levels of high thinking, and come down
from the Mount with beaming countenance and the tables of the law intact;
others fail to reach the difficult heights, and are content with such fragments
of the broken tables as they pick up below. But be his knowledge of the law
little or much, no parent escapes the call to rule.
Now, the first thing we ask for in a ruler is, “Is he able to rule? Does he
know how to maintain his authority?” A ruler who fails to govern is like an
unjust judge, an impious priest, an ignorant teacher, that is, he fails in the
essential attribute of his office. This is even more true in the family than in
the State; the king may rule by deputy; but, here we see the exigeant nature
of the parent’s functions; he can have no deputy. Helpers he may have, but
the moment he makes over his functions and authority to another, the rights
of parenthood belong to that other, and not to him. Who does not know of
the heart-burnings that arise when Anglo-Indian parents come home, to find
their children’s affections given to others, their duty owing to others; and
they, the parents, sources of pleasure like the godmother of the fairy tale,
but having no authority over their children? And all this, nobody’s fault, for
the guardians at home have done their best to keep the children loyal to the
parents abroad.
Here is indicated a rock upon which the heads of families sometimes
make shipwreck. They regard parental authority as inherent in them, a
property which may lie dormant, but is not to be separated from the state of

parenthood. They may allow their children from infancy upwards to do
what is right in their own eyes; and then, Lear turns and makes his plaint to
the winds, and cries—
“Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”

But Lear has been all the time divesting himself of the honour and authority
that belong to him, and giving his rights to the children. Here he tells us
why; the biting anguish is the “thankless” child. He has been laying himself
out for the thanks of his children. That they should think him a fond father,
has been more to him than the duty he owes them; and in proportion as he
omits his duty are they oblivious of theirs. Possibly the unregulated love of
approbation in devoted parents has more share in the undoing of families
than any other single cause. A writer of to-day represents a mother as
saying—
“But you are not afraid of me, Bessie?”
“No indeed; who could be afraid of a dear, sweet, soft, little mother like
you?”
And such praise is sweet in the ears of many a fond mother hungering
for the love and liking of her children, and not perceiving that words like
these in the mouth of a child are as treasonable as words of defiance.
Authority is laid down at other shrines than that of popularity. Prospero
describes himself as,
“all dedicate
To study, and the bettering of my mind.”

And, meantime, the exercise of authority devolves upon Antonio; is it any
wonder that the habit of authority fits the usurper like a glove, and that
Prospero finds himself ousted from the office he failed to fill? Even so, the
busy parent, occupied with many cares, awakes to find the authority he has
failed to wield has dropped out of his hands; perhaps has been picked up by
others less fit, and a daughter is given over to the charge of a neighbouring
family, while father and mother hunt for rare prints.
In other cases, the love of an easy life tempts parents to let things take
their course; the children are good children, and won’t go far wrong, we are
told; and very likely it is true. But however good the children be, the

parents owe it to society to make them better than they are, and to bless the
world with people, not merely good-natured and well-disposed, but good of
set purpose and endeavour.
The love of ease, the love of favour, the claims of other work, are only
some of the causes which lead to a result disastrous to society—the
abdication of parents. When we come to consider the nature and uses of the
parents’ authority, we shall see that such abdication is as immoral as it is
mischievous. Meantime, it is well worth while to notice that the causes
which lead parents to resign the position of domestic rulers are resolvable
into one—the office is too troublesome, too laborious. The temptation
which assails parents is the same which has led many a crowned head to
seek ease in the cloister—
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,”
if it be the natural crown of parenthood.
The Apostolic counsel of “diligence” in ruling throws light upon the
nature and aim of authority: it is no longer a matter of personal honour and
dignity; authority is for use and service, and the honour that goes with it is
only for the better service of those under authority. The arbitrary parent, the
exacting parent, who claims this and that of deference and duty because he
is a parent, all for his own honour and glory, is more hopelessly in the
wrong than the parent who practically abdicates; the majesty of parenthood
is hedged round with observances only because it is good for the children to
“faithfully serve, honour, and humbly obey” their natural rulers. Only at
home can children be trained in the chivalrous temper of “proud submission
and dignified obedience;” and if the parents do not inspire and foster
deference, reverence, and loyalty, how shall these crowning graces of
character thrive in a hard and emulous world?
It is perhaps a little difficult to maintain an attitude of authority in these
democratic days, when even educationalists counsel that children be treated
on equal terms from the very beginning; but the children themselves come
to our aid; the sweet humility and dependence natural to them fosters the
gentle dignity, the soupçon of reserve, which is becoming in parents. It is
not open to parents either to lay aside or to sink under the burden of the
honour laid upon them; and, no doubt, we have all seen the fullest, freest
flow of confidence, sympathy, and love between parent and child, where the

mother sits as a queen among her children and the father is honoured as a
crowned head. The fact that there are two parents, each to lend honour to
the other, yet free from restraint in each other’s presence, makes it the easier
to maintain the impalpable “state” of parenthood. And the presence of the
slight, sweet, undefined feeling of dignity in the household is the very first
condition for the bringing up of loyal, honourable men and women, capable
of reverence and apt to win respect.
The foundation of parental authority lies in the fact that parents hold
office as deputies; and that, in a twofold sense. In the first place, they are
the immediate and personally appointed deputies of the Almighty King, the
sole Ruler of men; they have not only to fulfil His counsels regarding the
children, but to represent His Person; his parents are as God to the little
child, and, yet more constraining thought, God is to him what his parents
are; he has no power to conceive a greater and lovelier personality than that
of the royal heads of his own home; he makes his first approach to the
Infinite through them; they are his measure for the highest; if the measure
be easily within his small compass, how shall he grow up with the reverent
temper which is the condition of spiritual growth?
More; parents hold their children in trust for society. “My own child”
can only be true in a limited sense; the children are held as a public trust to
be trained as is best for the welfare of the community; and in this sense,
also, the parents are persons in authority, with the dignity of their office to
support, and are even liable to deposition. The one State whose name has
passed into a proverb, standing for a group of virtues which we have no
other word to describe, is a State which practically deprived parents of the
functions which they failed to fulfil to the furtherance of public virtue. No
doubt the State reserves to itself virtually the power to bring up its own
children in its own way, with the least possible co-operation of parents.
Even to-day, a neighbouring nation has elected to charge itself with the
training of its infants. So soon as they can crawl, or sooner, before ever they
run or speak, they are to be brought to the “Maternal School,” and carefully
nurtured, as with mother’s milk, in the virtues proper for a citizen. The
scheme is as yet but in the experimental stage, but will doubtless be carried
through, because the nation in question has long ago discovered—and acted
consistently upon the discovery—that what you would have the man
become, that you must train the child to be.

Perhaps such public deposition of parents is the last calamity that can
befall a nation. These poor little ones are to grow up in a world where the
name of God is not to be named; to grow up, too, without the training in
filial duty and brotherly love and neighbourly kindness which falls to the
children of all but the few unnatural parents. They may be returned to their
parents at certain hours or after certain years; but once alienation has been
set up, once the strongest and sweetest tie has been loosened and the parents
have been publicly delivered from their duty, the desecration of the home is
complete; and we shall have the spectacle of a people growing up orphaned
almost from their birth. This is a new thing in the world’s history, for even
Lycurgus left the children to their parents for the first half-dozen years of
life. Certain newspapers commend the example for our imitation, but God
forbid that we should ever lose faith in the blessedness of family life.
Parents who hold their children as, at the same time, a public trust and a
divine trust, and who recognise the authority they hold as deputed authority,
not to be trifled with, laid aside, or abused—such parents preserve for the
nation the immunities of home, and safeguard the privileges of their order.
Having seen that it does not rest with the parents to use, or to forego the
use of, the authority they hold, let us examine the limitations and the scope
of this authority. In the first place, it is to be maintained and exercised
solely for the advantage of the children, whether in mind, body, or estate.
And here is room for the nice discrimination, the delicate intuitions, with
which parents are blessed. The mother, who makes her growing-up
daughter take the out-of-door exercise she needs, is acting within her
powers. The father of quiet habits, who discourages society for his young
people, is considering his own tastes, and not their needs, and is making
unlawful use of his authority.
Again, the authority of parents, though the deference it begets remain to
grace the relations of parents and child, is itself a provisional function, and
is only successful as it encourages the autonomy, if we may call it so, of the
child. A single decision made by the parents which the child is, or should
be, capable of making for itself, is an encroachment on the rights of the
child, and a transgression on the part of the parents.
Once more, the authority of parents rests on a secure foundation only as
they keep well before the children that it is deputed authority; the child who
knows that he is being brought up for the service of the nation, that his

parents are acting under a Divine commission, will not turn out a rebellious
son.
Further, though the emancipation of the children is gradual, they
acquiring day by day more of the art and science of self-government, yet
there comes a day when the parents’ right to rule is over; there is nothing
left for the parents but to abdicate gracefully, and leave their grown-up sons
and daughters absolutely free agents, even though these still live at home;
and although, in the eyes of their parents, they are not fit to be trusted with
the ordering of themselves: if they fail in such self-ordering, whether as
regards time, occupations, money, friends, most likely their parents are to
blame for not having introduced them by degrees to the full liberty which is
their right as men and women. Anyway, it is too late now to keep them in
training; fit or unfit, they must hold the rudder for themselves.
As for the employment of authority, the highest art lies in ruling without
seeming to do so. The law is a terror to evil-doers, but for the praise of them
that do well; and in the family, as in the State, the best government is that in
which peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, are
maintained without the intervention of the law. Happy is the household that
has few rules, and where “Mother does not like this,” and “Father wishes
that,” are all-constraining.

CHAPTER III

PARENTS AS INSPIRERS

Part I

M. Adolf Monod claims that the child must owe to his mother a second
birth—the first into the natural, the second into the spiritual life of the
intelligence and moral sense. Had he not been writing of women and for
women, no doubt he would have affirmed that the long travail of this
second birth must be undergone equally by both parents. Do we ask how he
arrives at this rather startling theory? He observes that great men have great
mothers; mothers, that is, blest with an infinite capacity for taking pains
with their work of bringing up children. He likens this labour to a second
bearing which launches the child into a higher life; and as this higher life is
a more blessed life, he contends that every child has a right to this birth into
completer being at the hands of his parents. Did his conclusions rest solely
upon the deductive methods he pursues, we might afford to let them pass,
and trouble ourselves very little about this second birth, which parents may,
and ofttimes do, withhold from their natural offspring. We, too, could bring
forward our contrary instances of good parents with bad sons, and
indifferent parents with earnest children; and, pat to our lips, would come
the Cui bono? which absolves us from endeavour.
Be a good mother to your son because great men have good mothers, is
inspiring, stimulating; but is not to be received as the final word. For an
appeal of irresistible urgency, we look to natural science with her inductive
methods; though we are still waiting her last word, what she has already
said is law and gospel for the believing parent. The parable of Pandora’s
box is true to-day; and a woman may in her heedlessness let fly upon her
offspring a thousand ills. But is there not also “a glass of blessings standing

by,” into which parents may dip, and bring forth for their children health
and vigour, justice and mercy, truth and beauty?
“Surely,” it may be objected, “every good and perfect gift comes from
God above, and the human parent sins presumptuously who thinks to
bestow gifts divine.” Now this lingering superstition has no part nor lot with
true religion, but, on the contrary, brings upon it the scandal of many an ill-
ordered home and ill-regulated family. When we perceive that God uses
men and women, parents above all others, as vehicles for the transmission
of His gifts, and that it is in the keeping of His law He is honoured—more
than in the attitude of the courtier waiting for exceptional favours—then we
shall take the trouble to comprehend the law, written not only upon tables of
stone and rolls of parchment, but upon the fleshly tablets of the living
organisms of the children; and, understanding the law, we shall see with
thanksgiving and enlargement of heart in what natural ways God does
indeed show mercy unto thousands of them that love Him and keep His
commandments.
But His commandment is exceeding broad; becomes broader year by
year with every revelation of science; and we had need gird up the loins of
our mind to keep pace with this current revelation. We shall be at pains, too,
to keep ourselves in that attitude of expectant attention wherein we shall be
enabled to perceive the unity and continuity of this revelation with that of
the written Word of God. For perhaps it is only as we are able to receive the
two, and harmonise the two in a willing and obedient heart, that we shall
enter on the heritage of glad and holy living which is the will of God for us.
Let us, for example, consider, in the light of current scientific thought,
the processes and the methods of this second birth, which, according to M.
Monod, the child claims at the hands of his parents. “Train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” is not only
a pledge, but is a statement of a result arrived at by deductive processes.
The writer had great opportunities for collecting data; he had watched many
children grow up, and his experience taught him to divide them into two
classes—the well-brought up, who turned out well; and the ill-brought up,
who turned out ill. No doubt, then, as now, there were startling exceptions,
and—the exception proves the rule.

But, here as elsewhere, the promises and threatenings of the Bible will
bear the searching light of inductive processes. We may ask, Why should
this be so? and not content ourselves with a general answer, that this is
natural and right: we may search until we discover that this result is
inevitable, and no other result conceivable (except for alien influences), and
our obedience will be in exact proportion to our perception of the
inevitableness of the law.
The vast sum of what we understand by heredity is not to be taken into
account in the consideration of this second birth; by the first natural birth it
is, that “his father and mother, his grandfather and grandmother, are latent
or declare themselves in the child; and it is on the lines thus laid down in
his nature that his development will proceed. It is not by virtue of education
so much as by virtue of inheritance that he is brave or timid, generous or
selfish, prudent or reckless, boastful or modest, quick or placid in temper;
the ground tone of his character is original in him, and it colours all the
subsequently formed emotions and their sympathetic ideas.... The influence
of systematic culture upon any one is no doubt great, but that which
determines the limit, and even in some degree the nature of the effects of
culture, that which forms the foundations upon which all the modifications
of art must rest, is the inherited nature.”
If heredity means so much, if, as would seem at the first glance, the child
comes into the world with his character ready-made, what remains for the
parents to do but to enable him to work out his own salvation without let or
hindrance of their making, upon the lines of his individuality? The strong
naturalism, shall we call it, of our day, inclines us to take this view of the
objects and limitations of education; and without doubt it is a gospel; it is
the truth; but it is not the whole truth. The child brings with him into the
world, not character, but disposition. He has tendencies which may need
only to be strengthened, or, again, to be diverted, or even repressed. His
character—the efflorescence of the man wherein the fruit of his life is a-
preparing—character is original disposition, modified, directed, expanded
by education, by circumstances, later, by self-control and self-culture, above
all, by the supreme agency of the Holy Ghost, even where that agency is
little suspected, and as little solicited.
How is this great work of character-making—the single effectual labour
possible to human beings—to be carried on? We shall rest our inquiries on a

physiological basis; the lowest, doubtless, but therefore the foundation of
the rest. The first-floor chambers of the psychologist are pleasant places,
but who would begin to build with the first floor? What would he rear it
upon? Surely the arbitrary distinction between the grey matter of the brain
and the “mind” (or thoughts or feelings) which plays upon it, even as the
song upon the vocal chords of the singer, is more truly materialistic than is
the recognition of the pregnant truth that the brain is the mere organ of the
spiritual part, registering and effecting every movement of thought and
feeling, whether conscious or unconscious, by appreciable molecular
movement, and sustaining the infinite activities of mind by corresponding
enormous activity and enormous waste; that it is the organ of mind, which,
under present conditions, is absolutely inseparable from, and indispensable
to, the quickening spirit. Once we recognise that in the thinking of a thought
there is as distinct motion set up in some tract of the brain as there is in the
muscles of the hand employed in writing a sentence, we shall see that the
behaviour of the grey nerve-substance of the cerebrum should afford the
one possible key to certitude and system in our attempts at education, using
the word in the most worthy sense—as its concern is the formation of
character.
Having heard Dr. Maudsley on the subject of heredity, let us hear him
again on this other subject, which practically enables us to define the
possibilities of education.
“That which has existed with any completeness in consciousness leaves
behind it, after its disappearance therefrom, in the mind or brain, a
functional disposition to its reproduction or reappearance in consciousness
at some future time. Of no mental act can we say that it is ‘writ in water;’
something remains from it, whereby its recurrence is facilitated. Every
impression of sense upon the brain, every current of molecular activity from
one to another part of the brain, every cerebral action which passes into
muscular movement, leaves behind it some modification of the nerve
elements concerned in its function, some after-effect, or, so to speak,
memory of itself in them which renders its reproduction an easier matter,
the more easy the more often it has been repeated, and makes it impossible
to say that, however trivial, it shall not under some circumstances recur. Let
the excitation take place in one of two nerve cells lying side by side, and
between which there was not any original specific difference, there will be

ever afterwards a difference between them. This physiological process,
whatever be its nature, is the physical basis of memory, and it is the
foundation of the development of all our mental functions.
“That modification which persists, or is retained, in structure after
functions, has been differently described as a residuum, or relic, or trace, or
disposition, or vestige; or again as potential, latent, or dormant idea. Not
only definite ideas, but all affections of the nervous system, feelings of
pleasure and pain, desire, and even its outward reactions, thus leave behind
them their structural effects, and lay the foundation of modes of thought,
feeling, and action. Particular talents are sometimes formed quite, or almost
quite, involuntarily; and complex actions, which were first consciously
performed by dint of great application, become automatic by repetition;
ideas which were at first consciously associated, ultimately coalesce and
call one another up without any consciousness, as we see in the quick
perception or intuition of the man of large worldly experience; and feelings,
once active, leave behind them their large unconscious residua, thus
affecting the generation of the character, so that, apart from the original or
inborn nature of the individual, contentment, melancholy, cowardice,
bravery, and even moral feeling are generated as the results of particular
life-experiences.”
Here we have sketched out a magnificent educational charter. It is as
well, perhaps, that we do not realise the extent of our liberties; if we did, it
may be, such a fervour of educational enthusiasm would seize us, that we
should behave as did those early Christians who every day expected the
coming of the Lord. How should a man have patience to buy and sell and
get gain had it been revealed to him that he was able to paint the greatest
picture ever painted? And we, with the enthralling vision of what our little
child might become under our hands, how should we have patience for
common toils? That science should have revealed the rationale of education
in our day is possibly the Divine recognition that we have become more fit
for the task, because we have come to an increasing sense of moral
responsibility. What would it be for an immoral people to discern fully the
possibilities of education? But how slow we are! how—
“Custom lies upon us with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”

It is now more than five-and-twenty years since these words of Dr.
Maudsley, and many of like force by other physiologists, were published to
the world. We have purposely chosen words that have stood the test of time;
for to-day a hundred eminent scientific men, at home and abroad, are
proclaiming the same truths. Every scientist believes them! And we? We go
on after our use and wont, as if nothing had been said; dropping, hour by
hour, out of careless hands, seeds of corn and hemlock, of bramble and rose.
Let us run over the charter of our liberties, as Dr. Maudsley sums them
up.
We may lay the physical basis of memory: while the wide-eyed babe
stretches his little person with aimless kickings on his rug, he is receiving
unconsciously those first impressions which form his earliest memories;
and we can order those memories for him: we can see that the earliest sights
he sees are sights of order, neatness, beauty; that the sounds his ear drinks
in are musical and soft, tender and joyous; that the baby nostrils sniff only
delicate purity and sweetness. These memories remain through life,
engraved on the unthinking brain. As we shall see later, memories have a
certain power of accretion—where there are some others of a like kind
gather, and all the life is ordered on the lines of these first pure and tender
memories.
We may lay the foundation of the development of all the mental
functions. Are there children who do not wonder, or revere, or care for fairy
tales, or think wise child-thoughts? Perhaps there are not; but if there are, it
is because the fertilising pollen grain has never been conveyed to the ovule
waiting for it in the child’s soul.
These are some of the things that—according to the citations we have
given from Dr. Maudsley’s Physiology of Mind—his parents may settle for
the future man, even in his early childhood:—
His definite ideas upon particular subjects, as, for example, his
relations with other people.
His habits, of neatness or disorder, of punctuality, of moderation.
His general modes of thought, as affected by altruism or egoism.
His consequent modes of feeling and action.

His objects of thought—the small affairs of daily life, the natural
world, the operations or the productions of the human mind, the
ways of God with men.
His distinguishing talent—music, eloquence, invention.
His disposition or tone of character, as it shows itself in and
affects his family and other close relations in life—reserved or
frank, morose or genial, melancholy or cheerful, cowardly or brave.

CHAPTER IV

PARENTS AS INSPIRERS

Part II
“Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”—
Thackeray.

The last chapter closed with an imperfect summary of what we may call the
educational functions of parents. We found that it rests with the parents of
the child to settle for the future man his ways of thinking, behaving, feeling,
acting; his disposition, his particular talent; the manner of things upon
which his thoughts shall run. Who shall fix limitations to the power of
parents? The destiny of the child is ruled by his parents, because they have
the virgin soil all to themselves. The first sowing must be at their hands, or
at the hands of such as they choose to depute.
What do they sow? Ideas. We cannot too soon recognise what is the sole
educational instrument we have to work with, and how this one instrument
is to be handled. But how radically wrong is all our thought upon
education! We cannot use the fit words because we do not think the right
thing. For example, an idea is not an “instrument,” but an agent; is not to be
“handled,” but, shall we say, set in motion? We have perhaps got over the
educational misconception of the tabula rasa. No one now looks on the
child’s white soul as a tablet prepared for the exercise of the educator’s
supreme art. But the conception which has succeeded this time-honoured
heresy rests on the same false bases of the august office and the infallible
wisdom of the educator. Here it is in its cruder form: “Pestalozzi aimed
more at harmoniously developing the faculties than at making use of them
for the acquirement of knowledge; he sought to prepare the vase rather than
to fill it.” In the hands of Froebel the figure gains in boldness and beauty; it
is no longer a mere vase to be shaped under the potter’s fingers; but a

flower, say, a perfect rose, to be delicately and consciously and
methodically moulded, petal by petal, curve and curl; for the perfume and
living glory of the flower, why these will come; do you your part and mould
the several petals; wait, too, upon sunshine and shower, give space and
place for your blossom to expand. And so we go to work with a touch to
“imagination” here, and to “judgment” there; now, to the “perceptive
faculties,” now, to the “conceptive;” in this, aiming at the moral, and in this,
at the intellectual nature of the child; touching into being, petal by petal, the
flower of a perfect life under the genial influences of sunny looks and
happy moods. This reading of the meaning of education and of the work of
the educator is very fascinating, and it calls forth singular zeal and self-
devotion on the part of those gardeners whose plants are the children.
Perhaps, indeed, this of the Kindergarten is the one vital conception of
education we have had hitherto.
But in these days of revolutionary thought, when all along the line—in
geology and anthropology, chemistry, philology, and biology—science is
changing front, it is necessary that we should reconsider our conception of
Education. We are taught, for example, that “heredity” is by no means the
simple and direct transmission, from parent, or remote ancestor, to child of
power and proclivity, virtue and defect; and we breathe freer, because we
had begun to suspect that if this were so, it would mean to most of us an
inheritance of exaggerated defects: imbecility, insanity, congenital disease
—are they utterly removed from any one of us? So of education, we begin
to ask, Is its work so purely formative as we thought? Is it directly
formative at all? How much is there in this pleasing and easy doctrine, that
the drawing forth and strengthening and directing of the several “faculties”
is education? Parents are very jealous over the individuality of their
children; they mistrust the tendency to develop all on the same plan; and
this instinctive jealousy is right; for, supposing that education really did
consist in systematised efforts to draw out every power that is in us, why,
we should all develop on the same lines, be as like as “two peas,” and
(should we not?) die of weariness of one another! Some of us have an
uneasy sense that things are tending towards this deadly sameness. But,
indeed, the fear is groundless. We may believe that the personality, the
individuality, of each of us, is too dear to God, and too necessary to a
complete humanity, to be left at the mercy of empirics. We are absolutely

safe, and the tenderest child is fortified against a battering-ram of
educational forces.
The problem of education is more complex than it seems at first sight,
and well for us and the world that it is so. “Education is a life;” you may
stunt and starve and kill, or you may cherish and sustain; but the beating of
the heart, the movement of the lungs, and the development of the faculties
(are there any “faculties”?) are only indirectly our care. The poverty of our
thought on the subject of education is shown by the fact that we have no
word which at all implies the sustaining of a life: education (e, out, and
ducere, to lead, to draw) is very inadequate; it covers no more than those
occasional gymnastics of the mind which correspond with those by which
the limbs are trained: training (trahere) is almost synonymous, and upon
these two words rests the misconception that the development and the
exercise of the “faculties” is the object of education (we must needs use the
word for want of a better). Our homely Saxon “bringing up” is nearer the
truth, perhaps because of its very vagueness; any way, “up” implies an aim,
and “bringing” an effort.
The happy phrase of Mr. Matthew Arnold—“Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, a life”—is perhaps the most complete and
adequate definition of education we possess. It is a great thing to have said
it; and our wiser posterity may see in that “profound and exquisite remark”
the fruition of a lifetime of critical effort. Observe how it covers the
question from the three conceivable points of view. Subjectively, in the
child, education is a life; objectively, as affecting the child, education is a
discipline; relatively, if we may introduce a third term, as regards the
environment of the child, education is an atmosphere.
We shall examine each of these postulates later; at present we shall
attempt no more than to clear the ground a little, with a view to the subject
of this paper, “Parents as Inspirers”—not “modellers,” but “inspirers.”
It is only as we recognise our limitations that our work becomes
effective: when we see definitely what we are to do, what we can do, and
what we cannot do, we set to work with confidence and courage; we have
an end in view, and we make our way intelligently towards that end, and a
way to an end is method. It rests with parents not only to give their children
birth into the life of intelligence and moral power, but to sustain the higher

life which they have borne. Now that life, which we call education, receives
only one kind of sustenance; it grows upon ideas. You may go through
years of so-called “education” without getting a single vital idea; and that is
why many a well-fed body carries about a feeble, starved intelligence; and
no society for the prevention of cruelty to children cries shame on the
parents. Only the other day we heard of a girl of fifteen who had spent two
years at a school without taking part in a single lesson, and this by the
express desire of her mother, who wished all her time and all her pains to be
given to “fancy needlework.” This, no doubt, is a survival (not of the
fittest), but it is possible to pass even the Universities’ Local Examinations
with credit, without ever having experienced that vital stir which marks the
inception of an idea; and, if we have succeeded in escaping this disturbing
influence, why we have “finished our education” when we leave school; we
shut up our books and our minds, and remain pigmies in the dark forest of
our own dim world of thought and feeling.
What is an idea? A live thing of the mind, according to the older
philosophers, from Plato to Bacon, from Bacon to Coleridge. We say of an
idea that it strikes us, impresses us, seizes us, takes possession of us, rules
us; and our common speech is, as usual, truer to fact than the conscious
thought which it expresses. We do not in the least exaggerate in ascribing
this sort of action and power to an idea. We form an ideal—a, so to speak,
embodied idea—and our ideal exercises the very strongest formative
influence upon us. Why do you devote yourself to this pursuit, that cause?
“Because twenty years ago such and such an idea struck me,” is the sort of
history which might be given of every purposeful life—every life devoted
to the working out of an idea. Now is it not marvellous that, recognising as
we do the potency of an idea, both the word and the conception it covers
enter so little into our thought of education?
Coleridge brings the conception of an “idea” within the sphere of the
scientific thought of to-day; not as that thought is expressed in Psychology
—a term which he himself launched upon the world with an apology for it
as an insolens verbum,[1] but in that science of the correlation and
interaction of mind and brain, which is at present rather clumsily expressed
in such terms as “mental physiology” and “psycho-physiology.”
In his method he gives us the following illustration of the rise and
progress of an idea:—

“We can recall no incident of human history that impresses the
imagination more deeply than the moment when Columbus, on an unknown
ocean, first perceived that startling fact, the change of the magnetic needle.
How many such instances occur in history, when the ideas of nature
(presented to chosen minds by a Higher Power than Nature herself)
suddenly unfold, as it were, in prophetic succession, systematic views
destined to produce the most important revolutions in the state of man! The
clear spirit of Columbus was doubtless eminently methodical. He saw
distinctly that great leading idea which authorised the poor pilot to become
a ‘promiser of kingdoms.’”
Notice the genesis of such ideas—“presented to chosen minds by a
Higher Power than Nature;” notice how accurately this history of an idea
fits in with what we know of the history of great inventions and discoveries,
with that of the ideas which rule our own lives; and how well does it
correspond with that key to the origin of “practical” ideas which we find
elsewhere:—
“Doth the plowman plow continually to ... open and break the clods of
his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast
abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and put in the wheat in rows,
and the barley in the appointed place, and the spelt in the border thereof?
For his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him....
“Bread corn is ground; for he will not ever be threshing it.... This also
cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and
excellent in wisdom.”[2]
Ideas may invest as an atmosphere, rather than strike as a weapon. “The
idea may exist in a clear, distinct definite form, as that of a circle in the
mind of a geometrician; or it may be a mere instinct, a vague appetency
towards something, ... like the impulse which fills the young poet’s eyes
with tears, he knows not why.” To excite this “appetency towards
something”—towards things lovely, honest, and of good report, is the
earliest and most important ministry of the educator. How shall these
indefinite ideas which manifest themselves in appetency be imparted? They
are not to be given of set purpose, nor taken at set times. They are held in
that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere,
which he breathes as his breath of life; and this atmosphere in which the

child inspires his unconscious ideas of right living emanates from his
parents. Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word of
kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the very
atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of these things, may
never think of them, but all his life long they excite that “vague appetency
towards something” out of which most of his actions spring. Oh! the
wonderful and dreadful presence of the little child in the midst.
That he should take direction and inspiration from all the casual life
about him, should make our poor words and ways the starting-point from
which, and in the direction of which, he develops—this is a thought which
makes the most of us hold our breath. There is no way of escape for parents;
they must needs be as “inspirers” to their children, because about them
hangs, as its atmosphere about a planet, the thought-environment of the
child, from which he derives those enduring ideas which express
themselves as a life-long “appetency” towards things sordid or things
lovely, things earthly or divine.
Let us now hear Coleridge on the subject of those definite ideas which
are not inhaled as air, but conveyed as meat to the mind:—[3]
“From the first, or initiative idea, as from a seed, successive ideas
germinate.”
“Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery of the
external world, are like light, and air, and moisture to the seed of the mind,
which would else rot and perish.”
“The paths in which we may pursue a methodical course are manifold,
and at the head of each stands its peculiar and guiding idea.”
“Those ideas are as regularly subordinate in dignity as the paths to which
they point are various and eccentric in direction. The world has suffered
much, in modern times, from a subversion of the natural and necessary
order of Science ... from summoning reason and faith to the bar of that
limited physical experience to which, by the true laws of method, they owe
no obedience.”
“Progress follows the path of the idea from which it sets out; requiring,
however, a constant wakefulness of mind to keep it within the due limits of

its course. Hence the orbits of thought, so to speak, must differ among
themselves as the initiative ideas differ.”
Have we not here the corollary to, and the explanation of, that law of
unconscious cerebration which results in our “ways of thinking,” which
shapes our character, rules our destiny? Thoughtful minds consider that the
new light which biology is throwing upon the laws of mind is bringing to
the front once more the Platonic doctrine, that “An idea is a distinguishable
power, self-affirmed, and seen in its unity with the Eternal Essence.”
The whole subject is profound, but as practical as it is profound. We
absolutely must disabuse our minds of the theory that the functions of
education are, in the main, gymnastic. In the early years of the child’s life it
makes, perhaps, little apparent difference whether his parents start with the
notion that to educate is to fill a receptacle, inscribe a tablet, mould plastic
matter, or nourish a life; but in the end we shall find that only those ideas
which have fed his life are taken into the being of the child; all the rest is
thrown away, or worse, is like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an
injury to the vital processes.
This is, perhaps, how the educational formula should run: Education is a
life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin; but,
“God has made us so,”
that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty of
parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body
with food. The child is an eclectic; he may choose this or that; therefore, in
the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand, for
thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they
both shall be alike good.
The child has affinities with evil as well as with good; therefore, hedge
him about from any chance lodgment of evil suggestion.
The initial idea begets subsequent ideas; therefore, take care that
children get right primary ideas on the great relations and duties of life.
Every study, every line of thought, has its “guiding idea;” therefore the
study of a child makes for living education, as it is quickened by the
guiding idea “which stands at the head.”

In a word, our much boasted “infallible reason”—is it not the
involuntary thought which follows the initial idea upon necessary logical
lines? Given, the starting idea, and the conclusion may be predicated almost
to a certainty. We get into the way of thinking such and such manner of
thoughts, and of coming to such and such conclusions, ever further and
further removed from the starting-point, but on the same lines. There is
structural adaptation in the brain tissue to the manner of thoughts we think
—a plan and a way for them to run in. Thus we see how the destiny of a life
is shaped in the nursery, by the reverent naming of the Divine Name; by the
light scoff at holy things; by the thought of duty the little child gets who is
made to finish conscientiously his little task; by the hardness of heart that
comes to the child who hears the faults or sorrows of others spoken of
lightly.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] “We beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum, but it is one of which
our language stands in great need.”—S. T. Coleridge.
[2] Isaiah xxviii.
[3] Method—S. T. Coleridge.

CHAPTER V

PARENTS AS INSPIRERS

Part III

It is probable that parents as a class feel more than ever before the
responsibility of their prophetic office. It is as revealers of God to their
children that parents touch their highest limitations; perhaps it is only as
they succeed in this part of their work that they fulfil the Divine intention in
giving them children to bring up—in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord.
How to fortify the children against the doubts of which the air is full, is
an anxious question. Three courses are open—to teach as we of an older
generation have been taught, and to let them bide their time and their
chance; to attempt to deal with the doubts and difficulties which have
turned up, or are likely to turn up; or, to give children such hold upon vital
truth, and, at the same time, such an outlook upon current thought, that they
shall be landed on the safe side of the controversies of their day, open to
truth, in however new a light presented, and safeguarded against mortal
error.
The first course is unfair to the young: when the attack comes, they find
themselves at a disadvantage; they have nothing to reply; their pride is in
arms; they jump to the conclusion that there is no defence possible of that
which they have received as truth; had there been, would they not have
been instructed to make it? They resent being made out in the wrong, being
on the weaker side—so it seems to them,—being behind their times; and
they go over without a struggle to the side of the most aggressive thinkers
of their day.
Let us suppose that, on the other hand, they have been fortified with
“Christian Evidences,” defended by bulwarks of sound dogmatic teaching.

Religion without definite dogmatic teaching degenerates into sentiment, but
dogma, as dogma, offers no defence against the assaults of unbelief. As for
“evidences,” the rôle of the Christian apologist is open to the imputation
conveyed in the keen proverb, qui s’excuse, s’accuse; the truth by which we
live must needs be self-evidenced, admitting of neither proof nor disproof.
Children should be taught Bible history with every elucidation which
modern research makes possible. But they should not be taught to think of
the inscriptions on the Assyrian monuments, for example, as proofs of the
truth of the Bible records, but rather as illustrations, though they are, and
cannot but be subsidiary proofs.
Let us look at the third course; and first, as regards the outlook upon
current thought. Contemporary opinion is the fetish of the young mind.
Young people are eager to know what to think on all the serious questions
of religion and life. They ask what is the opinion of this and that leading
thinker of their day. They by no means confine themselves to such leaders
of thought as their parents have elected to follow; on the contrary, the
“other side” of every question is the attractive side for them, and they do
not choose to be behind the foremost in the race of thought.
Now, that their young people should thus take to the water need not
come upon parents as a surprise. The whole training from babyhood upward
should be in view of this plunge. When the time comes, there is nothing to
be done; openly, it may be, secretly if the home rule is rigid, the young folk
think their own thoughts; that is, they follow the leader they have elected;
for they are truly modest and humble at heart, and do not yet venture to
think for themselves; only they have transferred their allegiance. Nor is this
transfer of allegiance to be resented by parents; we all claim this kind of
“suffrage” in our turn when we feel ourselves included in larger interests
than those of the family.
But there is much to be done beforehand, though nothing when the time
comes. The notion that any contemporary authority is infallible may be
steadily undermined from infancy onwards, though at some sacrifice of ease
and glory to the parents. “I don’t know” must take the place of the vague
wise-sounding answer, the random shot which children’s pertinacious
questionings too often provoke. And “I don’t know” should be followed by
the effort to know, the research necessary to find out. Even then, the
possibility of error in a “printed book” must occasionally be faced. The

results of this kind of training in the way of mental balance and repose are
invaluable.
Another safeguard is in the attitude of reservation, shall we say? which it
may be well to preserve towards “Science.” It is well that the enthusiasm of
children should be kindled, that they should see how glorious it is to devote
a lifetime to patient research, how great to find out a single secret of nature,
a key to many riddles. The heroes of science should be their heroes; the
great names, especially of those who are amongst us, should be household
words. But here, again, nice discrimination should be exercised; two points
should be kept well to the front—the absolute silence of the oracle on all
ultimate questions of origin and life, and the fact that, all along the line,
scientific truth comes in like the tide, with steady advance, but with ebb and
flow of every wavelet of truth; so much so, that, at the present moment, the
teaching of the last twenty years is discredited in at least half a dozen
departments of science. Indeed, it would seem to be the part of wisdom to
wait half a century before fitting the discovery of to-day into the general
scheme of things. And this, not because the latest discovery is not
absolutely true, but because we are not yet able so to adjust it—according to
the “science of the proportion of things”—that it shall be relatively true.
But all this is surely beyond children? By no means; every walk should
quicken their enthusiasm for the things of nature, and their reverence for the
priests of that temple; but occasion should be taken to mark the progressive
advances of science, and the fact that the teaching of to-day may be the
error of to-morrow, because new light may lead to new conclusions even
from the facts already known. “Until quite lately, geologists thought ... they
now think ... but they may find reason to think otherwise in the future.” To
perceive that knowledge is progressive, and that the next “find” may always
alter the bearings of what went before; that we are waiting, and may have
very long to wait, for the last word; that science also is “revelation,” though
we are not yet able fully to interpret what we know; and that ‘science’
herself contains the promise of great impetus to the spiritual life—to
perceive these things is to be able to rejoice in all truth and to wait for final
certainty.
In another way we may endeavour to secure for the children that stability
of mind which comes of self-knowledge. It is well that they should know so
early, that they will seem to themselves always to have known, some of the

laws of thought which govern their own minds. Let them know that, once
an idea takes possession of them, it will pursue, so to speak, its own course,
will establish its own place in the very substance of the brain, will draw its
own train of ideas after it. One of the most fertile sources of youthful
infidelity is the fact that thoughtful boys and girls are infinitely surprised
when they come to notice the course of their own thoughts. They read a
book or listen to talk with a tendency to what is to them “free-thought.” And
then, the “fearful joy” of finding that their own thoughts begin with the
thought they have heard, and go on and on to new and startling conclusions
on the same lines! The mental stir of all this gives a delightful sense of
power, and a sense of inevitableness and certainty too; for they do not
intend or try to think this or that. It comes of itself; their reason, they
believe, is acting independently of them, and how can they help assuming
that what comes to them of itself, with an air of absolute certainty, must of
necessity be right?
But what if from childhood they had been warned, “Take care of your
thoughts, and the rest will take care of itself; let a thought in, and it will
stay; will come again to-morrow and the next day, will make a place for
itself in your brain, and will bring many other thoughts like itself. Your
business is to look at the thoughts as they come, to keep out the wrong
thoughts, and let in the right. See that ye enter not into temptation.” This
sort of teaching is not so hard to understand as the rules for the English
nominative, and is of infinitively more profit in the conduct of life. It is a
great safeguard to know that your “reason” is capable of proving any theory
you allow yourself to entertain.
We have touched here only on the negative side of the parent’s work as
prophet, inspirer. There are perhaps few parents to whom the innocence of
the babe in its mother’s arms does not appeal with pathetic force. “Open me
the gates of righteousness, that I may go in unto them,” is the voice of the
little unworldly child; and a wish, anyway, that he may be kept unspotted
from the world is breathed in every kiss of his mother, in the light of his
father’s eyes. But how ready we are to conclude that children cannot be
expected to understand spiritual things. Our own grasp of the things of the
Spirit is all too lax, and how can we expect that the child’s feeble
intelligence can apprehend the highest mysteries of our being? But here we
are altogether wrong. It is with the advance of years that a materialistic

temper settles upon us. But the children live in the light of the morning-
land. The spirit-world has no mysteries for them; that parable and travesty
of the spirit-world, the fairy-world, where all things are possible, is it not
their favourite dwelling-place? And fairy tales are so dear to children
because their spirits fret against the hard and narrow limitations of time and
place and substance; they cannot breathe freely in a material world. Think
what the vision of God should be to the little child already peering wistfully
through the bars of his prison-house. Not a far-off God, a cold abstraction,
but a warm, breathing, spiritual Presence about his path and about his bed—
a Presence in which he recognises protection and tenderness in darkness
and danger, towards which he rushes as the timid child to hide his face in
his mother’s skirts.
A friend tells me the following story of her girlhood. It so happened that
extra lessons detained her at school until dark every day during the winter.
She was extremely timid, but, with the unconscious reserve of youth, never
thought of mentioning her fear of “something.” Her way home lay by a
river-side, a solitary path under trees—big trees, with masses of shadow.
The black shadows, in which “something” might lie hid—the swsh-sh,
swsh-sh of the river, which might be whisperings or the rustle of garments
—filled her night by night with unabated terror. She fled along that river-
side path with beating heart; but, quick as flying steps and beating heart,
these words beat in her brain, over, and over, and over, the whole length of
the way, evening by evening, winter after winter: “Thou art my hiding-
place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble; Thou shalt compass me about
with songs of deliverance.” Years after, when the woman might be supposed
to have outgrown girlish terrors, she found herself again walking alone in
the early darkness of a winter’s evening under trees by the swsh-sh of
another river. The old terror returned, and with it the old words came to her,
and kept time the whole length of the way with her hasty steps. Such a
place to hide him in should be the thought of God to every child.
Their keen sensitiveness to spiritual influences is not due to ignorance
on the part of the children. It is we, not they, who are in error. The whole
tendency of modern biological thought is to confirm the teaching of the
Bible: the ideas which quicken come from above; the mind of the little child
is an open field, surely “good ground,” where, morning by morning, the
sower goes forth to sow, and the seed is the Word. All our teaching of

children should be given reverently, with the humble sense that we are
invited in this matter to co-operate with the Holy Spirit; but it should be
given dutifully and diligently, with the awful sense that our co-operation
would appear to be made a condition of the Divine action; that the Saviour
of the world pleads with us to “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,”
as if we had the power to hinder, as we know that we have.
This thought of the Saviour of the world implies another conception
which we sometimes leave out of sight in dealing with children. Young
faces are not always sunny and lovely; even the brightest children in the
happiest circumstances have their clouded hours. We rightly put the cloud
down to some little disorder, or to the weather, but these are the secondary
causes which reveal a deep-seated discontent. Children have a sense of sin
acute in proportion to their sensitiveness. We are in danger of trusting too
much to a rose-water treatment; we do not take children seriously enough;
brought face to face with a child, we find he is a very real person, but in our
educational theories we take him as “something between a wax doll and an
angel.” He sins; he is guilty of greediness, falsehood, malice, cruelty, a
hundred faults that would be hateful in a grown-up person; we say he will
know better by-and-by. He will never know better; he is keenly aware of his
own odiousness. How many of us would say about our childhood, if we told
the whole truth, “Oh, I was an odious little thing!” and that, not because we
recollect our faults, but because we recollect our childish estimate of
ourselves. Many a bright and merry child is odious in his own eyes; and the
“peace, peace, where there is no peace,” of fond parents and friends is little
comfort. It is well that we “ask for the old paths, where is the good way;” it
is not well that, in the name of the old paths, we lead our children into blind
alleys, nor that we let them follow the new into bewildering mazes.

CHAPTER VI

PARENTS AS INSPIRERS

Part IV
“One of the little boys gazing upon the terrible desolation of the scene, so unlike in its savage and
inhuman aspects anything he had ever seen at home, nestled close to his mother, and asked with
bated breath, ‘Mither, is there a God here?’”—John Burroughs.

The last chapter introduced the thought of parents in their highest function
—as revealers of God to their children. To bring the human race, family by
family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He
is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is, no
doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world. And this individual work
with each child, being the most momentous work in the world, is put into
the hands of the wisest, most loving, disciplined, and divinely instructed of
human beings. Be ye perfect as your Father is perfect, is the perfection of
parenthood, perhaps to be attained only in its fulness through parenthood.
There are mistaken parents, ignorant parents, a few indifferent parents,
even, as one in a thousand, callous parents; but the good that is done upon
the earth is done, under God, by parents, whether directly or indirectly.
Parents, who recognise that their great work is to be done by the
instrumentality of the ideas they are able to introduce into the minds of their
children, will take anxious thought as to those ideas of God which are most
fitting for children, and as to how those ideas may best be conveyed. Let us
consider an idea which is just now causing some stir in people’s thoughts.
“We read some of the Old Testament history as ‘history of the Jews,’ and
Job and Isaiah and the Psalms as poetry—and I am glad to say he is very
fond of them; and parts of the Gospels in Greek, as the life and character of
a hero. It is the greatest mistake to impose them upon children as

authoritative and divine all at once. It at once diminishes their interest: we
ought to work slowly up through the human side.”[4]
Here is a theory which commends itself to many persons because it is
“so reasonable.” But it goes upon the assumption that we are ruled by
Reason, an infallible entity, which is certain, give it fair play, to bring us to
just conclusions. Now the exercise of that function of the mind which we
call reasoning—we must decline to speak of “the Reason”—does indeed
bring us to inevitable conclusions; the process is definite, the result
convincing; but whether that result be right or wrong depends altogether
upon the initial idea which, when we wish to discredit it, we call a
prejudice; when we wish to exalt, we call an intuition, even an inspiration.
It would be idle to illustrate this position; the whole history of Error is the
history of the logical outcome of what we happily call misconceptions. The
history of Persecution is the tale of how the inevitable conclusions arrived
at by reasoning pass themselves off for truth. The Event of Calvary was due
to no hasty mad outburst of popular feeling. It was a triumph of reasoning:
the inevitable issue of more than one logical sequence; the Crucifixion was
not criminal, but altogether laudable, if that is right which is reasonable.
And this is why the hearts of religious Jews were hardened and their
understanding darkened; they were truly doing what was right in their own
eyes. It is a marvellous thing to perceive the thoughts within us driving us
forward to an inevitable conclusion, even against our will. How can that
conclusion which presents itself to us in spite of ourselves fail to be right?
Let us place ourselves for one instant in the position of the logical and
conscientious Jew. “‘Jehovah’ is a name of awe, unapproachable in thought
or act except in ways Himself has specified. To attempt unlawful approach
is to blaspheme. As Jehovah is infinitely great, presumptuous offence is
infinitely heinous, is criminal, is the last crime as committed against Him
who is the First. The blasphemer is worthy of death. This man makes
himself equal with God, the unapproachable. He is a blasphemer, arrogant
as Beelzebub. He is doubly worthy of death. To the people of the Jews is
committed in trust the honoured Name; upon them it is incumbent to
exterminate the blasphemer. The man must die.” Here is the secret of the
virulent hatred which dogged the steps of the blameless Life. These men
were following the dictates of reason, and knew, so they would say, that

they were doing right. Here we have the invincible ignorance which the
Light of the world failed to illumine; and He,
“Who knows us as we are,
Yet loves us better than He knows,”

offers for them the true plea, “They know not what they do.” The steps of
the argument are incontrovertible; the error lies in the initial idea,—such
conception of Jehovah as made the conception of Christ inadmissible,
impossible. Thus reasoned the Jew upon whom his religion had the first
claim. The patriotic Jew, to whom religion itself was subservient to the
hopes of his nation, arrived by quite another chain of spontaneous
arguments at the same inevitable conclusion:—“The Jews are the chosen
people. The first duty of a Jew is towards his nation. These are critical
times. A great hope is before us, but we are in the grip of the Romans; they
may crush out the national life before our hope is realised. Nothing must be
done to alarm their suspicions. This Man? By all accounts He is harmless,
perhaps righteous. But He stirs up the people. It is rumoured that they call
Him King of the Jews. He must not be permitted to ruin the hopes of the
nation. He must die. It is expedient that one man die for the people, and that
the whole nation perish not.” Thus the consummate crime that has been
done upon the earth was done probably without any consciousness of
criminality; on the contrary, with the acquittal of that spurious moral sense
which supports with its approval all reasonable action. The Crucifixion was
the logical and necessary outcome of ideas imbibed from their cradles by
the persecuting Jews. So of every persecution; none is born of the occasion
and the hour, but comes out of the habit of thought of a lifetime.
It is the primal impulse to these habits of thought which children must
owe to their parents; and, as a man’s thought and action Godward is—
“The very pulse of the machine,”
the introduction of such primal ideas as shall impel the soul to God is the
first duty and the highest privilege of parents. Whatever sin of unbelief a
man is guilty of, are his parents wholly without blame? Let us consider
what is commonly done in the nursery in this respect. No sooner can the
little being lisp than he is taught to kneel up in his mother’s lap, and say
“God bless ...” and then follows a list of the near and dear, and “God bless
... and make him a good boy, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” It is very touching and

beautiful. I once peeped in at an open cottage door in a moorland village,
and saw a little child in its nightgown kneeling in its mother’s lap and
saying its evening prayer. The spot has ever since remained to me a sort of
shrine. There is no sight more touching and tender. By-and-by, so soon as
he can speak the words,
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,”
is added to the little one’s prayer, and later, “Our Father.” Nothing could be
more suitable and more beautiful than these morning and evening
approaches to God, the little children brought to Him by their mothers. And
most of us can “think back” to the hallowing influence of these early
prayers. But might not more be done? How many times a day does a mother
lift up her heart to God as she goes in and out amongst her children, and
they never know! “To-day I talked to them” (a boy and girl of four and five)
“about Rebekah at the well. They were very much interested, especially
about Eliezer praying in his heart and the answer coming at once. They
said, ‘How did he pray?’ I said, ‘I often pray in my heart when you know
nothing about it. Sometimes you begin to show a naughty spirit, and I pray
for you in my heart, and almost directly I find the good Spirit comes, and
your faces show my prayer is answered.’ O. stroked my hand and said,
‘Dear mother, I shall think of that!’ Boy looked thoughtful, but didn’t speak;
but when they were in bed I knelt down to pray for them before leaving
them, and when I got up, Boy said, ‘Mother, God filled my heart with
goodness while you prayed for us; and, mother, I will try to-morrow.’” Is it
possible that the mother could, when alone with her children, occasionally
hold this communing out loud, so that the children might grow up in the
sense of the presence of God? It would probably be difficult for many
mothers to break down the barrier of spiritual reserve in the presence of
even their own children. But could it be done, would it not lead to glad and
natural living in the recognised presence of God?
A mother who remembered a little penny scent-bottle as an early joy of
her own, took three such small bottles home to her three little girls. They
got them next morning at the family breakfast and enjoyed them all through
the meal. Before it ended the mother was called away, and little M. was
sitting rather solitary with her scent-bottle and the remains of her breakfast.
And out of the pure well of the little girl’s heart came this, intended for
nobody’s ear, “Dear mother, you are too good!” Think of the joy of the

mother who should overhear her little child murmuring over the first
primrose of the year, “Dear God, you are too good!” Children are so
imitative, that if they hear their parents speak out continually their joys and
fears, their thanks and wishes, they too will have many things to say.
Another point in this connection: the little German child hears and
speaks many times a day of der liebe Gott; to be sure he addresses Him as
“Du,” but du is part of his everyday speech; the circle of the very dear and
intimate is hedged in by the magic du. So with the little French child, whose
thought and word are ever of le bon Dieu; he also says Tu, but that is how
he speaks to those most endeared to him. But the little English child is
thrust out in the cold by an archaic mode of address, reverent in the ears of
us older people, but forbidding, we may be sure, to the child. Then, for the
Lord’s Prayer, what a boon would be a truly reverent translation of it into
the English of to-day. To us, who have learned to spell it out, the present
form is dear, almost sacred; but we must not forget that it is after all only a
translation; and is, perhaps, the most archaic piece of English in modern
use: “which art,”[5] commonly rendered “chart,” means nothing for a child.
“Hallowed” is the speech of a strange tongue to him—not much more to us;
“trespasses” is a semi-legal term, never likely to come into his everyday
talk, and no explanations will make “Thy” have the same force for him as
“your.” To make a child utter his prayers in a strange speech is to put up a
barrier between him and his “Almighty Lover.” Again, might we not
venture to teach our children to say “dear God”? A parent, surely, can
believe that no austerely reverential style can be so sweet in the Divine
Father’s ears as the appeal to “dear God” for sympathy in joy and help in
trouble, which flows naturally from the little child who is “used to God.”
Let children grow up aware of the constant, immediate, joy-giving, joy-
taking Presence in the midst of them, and you may laugh at all assaults of
“infidelity,” which is foolishness to him who knows his God as—only far
better than—he knows father or mother, wife or child.
Let them grow up, too, with the shout of a King in their midst. There are,
in this poor stuff we call human nature, founts of loyalty, worship,
passionate devotion, glad service, which have, alas! to be unsealed in the
earth-laden older heart, but only ask place to flow from the child’s. There is
no safeguard and no joy like that of being under orders, being possessed,
controlled, continually in the service of One whom it is gladness to obey.

We lose sight of the fact in our modern civilisation, but a king, a leader,
implies warfare, a foe, victory—possible defeat and disgrace. And this is
the conception of life which cannot too soon be brought before children.
“After thinking the matter over with some care, I resolved that I cannot
do better than give you my view of what it was that the average boy carried
away from our Rugby of half-a-century ago which stood him in the best
stead—was of the highest value to him—in after life.... I have been in some
doubt as to what to put first, and am by no means sure that the few who are
left of my old schoolfellows would agree with me; but, speaking for myself,
I think this was our most marked characteristic, the feeling that in school
and close we were in training for a big fight—were, in fact, already engaged
in it—a fight which would last all our lives, and try all our powers,
physical, intellectual, and moral, to the utmost. I need not say that this fight
was the world-old one of good with evil, of light and truth against darkness
and sin, of Christ against the devil.”
So said the author of “Tom Brown” in an address to Rugby School
delivered on a recent Quinquagesima Sunday. This is plain speaking;
education is only worthy of the name as it teaches this lesson; and it is a
lesson which should be learnt in the home or ever the child sets foot in any
other school of life. It is an insult to children to say they are too young to
understand this for which we are sent into the world. A boy of five, a great-
grandson of Dr. Arnold, was sitting at the piano with his mother, choosing
his Sunday hymn; he chose “Thy will be done,” and, as his special
favourite, the verse beginning, “Renew my will from day to day.” The
choice of hymn and verse rather puzzled his mother, who had a further
glimpse into the world of child-thought when the little fellow said wistfully,
“Oh, dear, it’s very hard to do God’s work!” The difference between doing
and bearing was not plain to him, but the battle and struggle and strain of
life already pressed on the spirit of the “careless, happy child.” That an evil
spiritual personality can get at their thoughts, and incite them to “be
naughty,” children learn all too soon, and understand, perhaps, better than
we do. Then, they are cross, “naughty,” separate, sinful, needing to be
healed as truly as the hoary sinner, and much more aware of their need,
because the tender soul of the child, like an infant’s skin, is fretted by
spiritual soreness. “It’s very kind of God to forgive me so often; I’ve been
naughty so many times to-day,” said a sad little sinner of six, not at all

because any one else had been at the pains to convince her of naughtiness.
Even “Pet Marjorie’s” buoyancy is not proof against this sad sense of
shortcoming:—
“Yesterday I behaved extremely ill in God’s most holy church, for I
would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend, ... and it was the very
same Devil that tempted Job that tempted me, I am sure; but he resisted
Satan, though he had boils and many other misfortunes which I have
escaped.”—(At six!)
We must needs smile at the little “crimes,” but we must not smile too
much, and let children be depressed with much “naughtiness” when they
should live in the instant healing, in the dear Name, of the Saviour of the
world.

FOOTNOTES:
[4] “Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton.” Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co.
[5] Catholics say “who art.”

CHAPTER VII

THE PARENT AS SCHOOLMASTER

“The schoolmaster will make him sit up!” “Sit up,” that is, “come when
he’s called,” apparently, for the remark concerned a young person who went
on spinning his top with nonchalance, ignoring an intermittent stream of
objurgations from his mother, whose view was that bedtime had arrived.
Circumstances alter cases, but is it unheard of in higher ranks of life to trust
to the schoolmaster to make a child “sit up,” after a good deal of mental and
moral sprawling about at home?
“Oh, he’s a little fellow yet; he will know better by-and-by.”
“My view is, let children have a delightful childhood. Time enough for
restraint and contradiction when they go to school.”
“We do not hold with punishing children; love your children, and let
them alone, is our principle.”
“They will meet with hardness enough in the world. Childhood shall
have no harsh memories for them.”
“School will break them in. Let them grow like young colts till the time
comes to break them. All young things should be free to kick about.”
“What’s bred in the bone must come out in the flesh. I do not care much
for all this clipping and shaping of children. Destroys individuality.”
“When he’s older, he will know better. Time cures many faults.”
And so on; we might fill pages with the wise things people say, who, for
one excellent reason or another, prefer to leave it to the schoolmaster to
make a child “sit up.” And does the schoolmaster live up to his reputation?
how far does he succeed with the child who comes to him with no self-
management? His real and proud successes are with the children who have

been trained to “sit up” at home. His pleasure in such children is
unbounded; the pains he takes with them unlimited; the successful careers
he is able to launch them upon exceed the ambition of those most wildly
ambitious of human beings (dare we say it?)—parents, quiet, sensible,
matter-of-fact parents. But the schoolmaster takes little credit to himself for
these happy results. Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are modest people,
though they are not always credited with their virtues.
“You can do anything with So-and-so; his parents have turned him out so
well.” Observe, the master takes little credit to himself (by no means so
much as he deserves); and why? Experience makes fools wise; and what
then of those who add experience to wisdom? “People send us their cubs to
lick into shape, and what can we do?” Now the answer to this query
concerns parents rather closely: what and how much can the schoolmaster
do to make the boy “sit up” who has not been to the manner bred?
No suasion will make you “sit up” if you are an oyster; no, nor even if
you are a cod. You must have a backbone, and your backbone must have
learned its work before sitting up is possible to you. No doubt the human
oyster may grow a backbone, and the human cod may get into the way of
sitting up, and some day, perhaps, we shall know of the heroic endeavours
made by schoolmaster and mistress to prop up, and haul up, and draw up,
and anyhow keep alert and sitting up, creatures whose way it is to sprawl.
Sometimes the result is surprising; they sit up in a row with the rest and
look all right; even when the props are removed they keep to the trick of
sitting up for awhile. The schoolmaster begins to rub his hands, and the
parents say, “I told you so. Didn’t I always say Jack would come right in the
end?” Wait a bit. The end is not yet. The habits of school, as of military life,
are more or less mechanical. The early habits are vital; reversion to these
takes place, and Jack sprawls as a man just as he sprawled as a child, only
more so. Various social props keep him up; he has the wit to seem to “sit
up”; he is lovable and his life is respectable; and no one suspects that this
easy-going Mr. John Brown is a failure; a man who had the elements of
greatness in him, and might have been of use in the world had he been put
under discipline from his infancy.
Sprawling is an ugly word, but the attitude we are thinking of is by no
means always inelegant. Scott gives a delightful illustration of one kind of
mental sprawling in “Waverley”:—

“Edward Waverley’s powers of apprehension were so quick as almost to
resemble intuition, and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him,
as a sportsman would phrase it, from overrunning his game; that is, from
acquiring his knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. And
here the instructor had to combat another propensity too often united with
brilliancy of fancy and vivacity of talent—the indolence, namely, which can
only be stirred by some strong motive of gratification, and which renounces
study as soon as curiosity is gratified, the pleasure of conquering the first
difficulties exhausted, and the novelty of pursuit at an end.” And the story
goes on to show, without laborious pointing of the moral, how Waverley by
name was wavering by nature, was ever the sport of circumstances because
he had not learned in youth to direct his course. He blunders into many
(most interesting) misadventures because he had failed to get, through his
studies, the alertness of mind and the self-restraint which should make a
man of him. Many pleasant things befall him, but not one of them, unless
we except Rose Bradwardine’s love—and when did woman study justice in
the bestowal of her favours?—not one did he earn by his own wit or
prowess; each advantage and success which came to him was the earnings
of another man. The elder Waverley had not only fortune but force of
character to make friends, so we are not made sad for the amiable young
man for whom we must needs feel affection; he does nothing to carve out a
way for himself, and he does everything to his own hindrance out of pure
want of the power of self-direction, but his uncle has fortune and friends,
and all ends well. For the sake, no doubt, of young persons less happily
situated, and of parents who are not able to play the part of bountiful
Providence to sons and daughters whom they have failed to fit for the
conduct of their own lives, the great novelist takes care to point out that
Edward Waverley’s personal failure in life was the fault of his education.
His abilities were even brilliant, but “I ought” had waited upon “I like”
from his earliest days, and he had never learned to make himself do the
thing he would.
Now it is this sort of “bringing under” that parents are apt to leave to the
schoolmaster. They do not give their children the discipline which results in
self-compelling power, and by-and-by, when they make over the task to
another, the time for training in the art of self-mastery has gone by, and a
fine character is spoiled through indolence and wilfulness.

But why will it not do to leave it to the schoolmaster to make a child “sit
up”? It is natural for a child to be left free as a bird in matters of no moral
significance. We would not let him tell lies, but if he hate his lessons, that
may be Nature’s way of showing he had better let them alone.
We must face the facts. We are not meant to grow up in a state of nature.
There is something simple, conclusive, even idyllic, in the statement that
so-and-so is “natural.” What more would you have? Jean Jacques Rousseau
preached the doctrine of natural education, and no reformer has had a
greater following. “It’s human nature,” we say, when stormy Harry snatches
his drum from Jack; when baby Marjorie, who is not two, screams for
Susie’s doll. So it is, and for that very reason it must be dealt with early.
Even Marjorie must be taught better. “I always finish teaching my children
obedience before they are one year old,” said a wise mother; and any who
know the nature of children, and the possibilities open to the educator, will
say, Why not? Obedience in the first year, and all the virtues of the good life
as the years go on; every year with its own definite work to show in the
training of character. Is Edward a selfish child when his fifth birthday
comes? The fact is noted in his parents’ year-book, with the resolve that by
his sixth birthday he shall, please God, be a generous child. Here, the reader
who has not realised that to exercise discipline is one of the chief functions
of parenthood, smiles and talks about “human nature” with all the air of an
unanswerable argument.
But we live in a redeemed world, and one of the meanings which that
unfathomable phrase bears is, that it is the duty of those who have the care
of childhood to eradicate each vulgar and hateful trait, to plant and foster
the precious fruits of that kingdom in the children who have been delivered
from the kingdom of nature into the kingdom of grace; that is to say, all
children born into this redeemed world. The parent who believes that the
possibilities of virtuous training are unlimited will set to work with cheerful
confidence, will forego the twaddle about “Nature,” whether as lovely in
itself or as an irresistible force, and will perceive that the first function of
the parent is that function of discipline which is so cheerfully made over to
the schoolmaster.
Now, to begin with, discipline does not mean a birch-rod, nor a corner,
nor a slipper, nor bed, nor any such last resort of the feeble. The sooner we
cease to believe in merely penal suffering as part of the Divine plan, the

sooner will a spasmodic resort to the birch-rod die out in families. We do
not say the rod is never useful; we do say it should never be necessary. The
fact is, many of us do not believe in education, except as it means the
acquirement of a certain amount of knowledge; but education which shall
deal curatively and methodically with every flaw in character does not enter
into our scheme of things possible. Now, no less than this is what we mean
when we say, Education is a Discipline. Where parents fail, the poor soul
has one further chance in the discipline of life; but we must remember that,
while it is the nature of the child to submit to discipline, it is the nature of
the undisciplined man to run his head in passionate wilfulness against the
circumstances that are for his training; so that the parent who wilfully
chooses to leave his child to be “broken in” by the schoolmaster or by life
leaves him to a fight in which all the odds are against him. The physique,
the temper, the disposition, the career, the affections, the aspirations of a
man are all, more or less, the outcome of the discipline his parents have
brought him under, or of the lawlessness they have allowed. What is
discipline? Look at the word; there is no hint of punishment in it. A disciple
is a follower, and discipline is the state of the follower, the learner, imitator.
Mothers and fathers do not well to forget that their children are, by the very
order of Nature, their disciples. Now no man sets himself up for a following
of disciples who does not wish to indoctrinate these with certain principles,
maxims, rules of life. So should the parent have at heart notions of life and
duty which he labours without pause to instil into his children.
He who would draw disciples does not trust to force, but to these three
things—to the attraction of his doctrine, to the persuasion of his
presentation, to the enthusiasm of his disciples; so the parent has teachings
of the perfect life which he knows how to present continually with winning
force until the children are quickened with such zeal for virtue and holiness
as carries them forward with leaps and bounds. Again, the teacher does not
indoctrinate his pupils all at once, but here a little and there a little, steady
progress on a careful plan; so the parent who would have his child a
partaker of the Divine nature has a scheme, an ascending scale of virtues, in
which he is diligent to practise his young disciple. He adds to the faith with
which the child is so richly dowered virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and to
knowledge, self-control. Having practised his child in self-control, he trains
him in patience, and to patience he adds godliness, and to godliness,
kindness, and to kindness, love. These, and such as these, wise parents

cultivate as systematically and with as definite results as if they were
teaching the “three R’s.”
But how? The answer covers so wide a field that we must leave it for
another chapter. Only this here—every quality has its defect, every defect
has its quality. Examine your child; he has qualities, he is generous; see to it
that the lovable little fellow, who would give away his soul, is not also rash,
impetuous, self-willed, passionate, “nobody’s enemy but his own.” It rests
with parents to make low the high places and exalt the valleys, to make
straight paths for the feet of their little son.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CULTURE OF CHARACTER

Part I

“What get I from my father?
Lusty life and vigorous will;
What from my gentle mother?
Cheerful days and poet’s skill,”[6]

says Goethe; for poets, like the rest of us, are born, not made, and get the
most of what they are from their parents. But it did not take poet or modern
scientist to discover this; people have known it time out of mind. Like
father, like child, they said, and were satisfied; for it was not the way in
earlier days to thresh out the great facts of life. Not so now; we talk about it
and about it; call it heredity, and take it into count in our notions, at any
rate, if not in our practice. Nobody writes a biography now without
attempting to produce progenitors and early surroundings that shall account
for his man or his woman. This fact of heredity is very much before the
public, and by-and-by will have its bearing on the loose notions people hold
about education. In this sort of way—“Harold is a bright little boy, but he
hasn’t the least power of attention.”
“Oh, I know he hasn’t; but then, poor child, he can’t help it! ‘What’s
bred in the bone,’ you know; and we are feather-brained on both sides of the
house.”
Now the practical educational question of our day is just this, Can he
help it? or, Can his parents help it? or, Must the child sit down for life with
whatever twist he has inherited? The fact is, many of us, professional
teachers, have been taking aim rather beside the mark; we talk as if the
development of certain faculties were the chief object of education; and we
point to our results, intellectual, moral, æsthetic, physical, with a—“See

there, what culture can effect!” But we forget that the child has inborn
cravings after all we have given him. Just as the healthy child must have his
dinner and his bed, so too does he crave for knowledge, perfection, beauty,
power, society; and all he wants is opportunity. Give him opportunities of
loving and learning, and he will love and learn, for “’tis his nature to.”
Whoever has taken note of the sweet reasonableness, the quick intelligence,
the bright imaginings of a child, will think the fuss we make about the right
studies for developing these is like asking, How shall we get a hungry man
to eat his dinner?
Many a man got his turn for natural science because, as a boy, he lived
in the country, and had a chance to observe living things and their ways.
Nobody took pains to develop his faculty; all he had was opportunity. If the
boy’s mind is crammed with other matters, he has no opportunity, and you
may meet men of culture who have lived most of their lives in the country,
and don’t know a thrush from a blackbird. I know of a woman who has
developed both a metaphysical and a literary turn, because, as a girl of ten,
she was allowed to browse on old volumes of the Spectator, the most telling
part of her education, she thinks. Again, I watched quite lately an
extraordinary educational result of opportunity. A friend, interested in a
Working Boys’ Club, undertook to teach a class to model in clay. There was
no selection made; the boys were mill-boys, taken as they came in, with no
qualifications, except that, as their teacher said, they had not been spoilt—
that is, they had not been taught to draw in the ordinary way. She gave them
clay, a model, one or two modelling tools, and also, being an artist, the
feeling of the object to be copied. After half-a-dozen lessons, the things they
produced cannot be called less than works of art; and delightful it was to
see the vigour and spirit they worked with, the artistic instinct which caught
the sentiment of the object, as the creases made by a little foot which make
a child’s shoe a thing to kiss. This lady maintains that she only let out what
was in the boys; but she did more, her own art enthusiasm forced out artistic
effort. Even taking into account the enthusiasm of the teacher—I wish we
might always count on that factor—this remains a fair case to prove our
point, which is, give them opportunity and direction, and children will do
the greater part of their own education, intellectual, æsthetic, even moral, by
reason of the wonderfully balanced desires, powers, and affections which
go to make up human nature.

A cheerful doctrine this, which should help to swell the ranks of the
unemployed. Outlets for their energies, a little direction, a little control, and
then we may sit by with folded hands and see them do it. But, in fact, there
are two things to be done: “powers to be developed—where a little of our
help goes a long way; and character to be formed”—and here children are
as clay in the hands of the potter, absolutely dependent on their parents.
Disposition, intellect, genius, come pretty much by nature; but character is
an achievement, the one practical achievement possible to us for ourselves
and for our children; and all real advance in family or individual is along
the lines of character. Our great people are great simply by reason of their
force of character. For this, more than for their literary successes, Carlyle
and Johnson are great. Boswell’s “Life” is, and perhaps deserves to be,
more of a literary success than anything of his master’s; but what figure
does he make after all?
Greatness and littleness belong to character, and life would be dull were
we all cast in one mould; but how come we to differ? Surely by reason of
our inherited qualities. It is hereditary tendencies which result in character.
The man who is generous, obstinate, hot-tempered, devout, is so, on the
whole, because that strain of character runs in his family. Some progenitor
got a bent from his circumstances towards fault or virtue, and that bent will
go on repeating itself to the end of the chapter. To save that single quality
from the exaggeration which would destroy the balance of qualities we call
sanity, two counter-forces are provided: marriage into alien families, and
education.
We come round now to the point we started from. If the development of
character rather than of faculty is the main work of education, and if people
are born, so to speak, ready-made, with all the elements of their after-
character in them, certain to be developed by time and circumstances, what
is left for education to do?
Very commonly, the vote is, do nothing; though there are three or four
ways of arriving at that conclusion.
As, What’s the good? The fathers have eaten sour grapes; the children’s
teeth must be set on edge. Tommy is obstinate as a little mule—but what
would you have? So is his father. So have been all the Joneses, time out of

mind; and Tommy’s obstinacy is taken as a fact, not to be helped nor
hindered.
Or, Mary is a butterfly of a child, never constant for five minutes to
anything she has in hand. “That child is just like me!” says her mother; “but
time will steady her.” Fanny, again, sings herself to sleep with the Sicilian
Vesper Hymn (her nurse’s lullaby) before she is able to speak. “It’s strange
how an ear for music runs in our family!” is the comment, but no particular
pains are taken to develop the talent.
Another child asks odd questions, is inclined to make little jokes about
sacred things, to call his father “Tom,” and, generally, to show a want of
reverence. His parents are earnest-minded people—think with pain of the
loose opinions of Uncle Harry, and decide on a policy of repression. “Do as
you’re bid, and make no remarks,” becomes the child’s rule of life, until he
finds outlets little suspected at home.
In another case, common thought is much more on a level with the
science of the day; there is a tendency to lung-trouble: the doctors
undertake to deal with the tendency so long as the habit of delicacy is not
set up. The necessary precautions are taken, and there is no reason why the
child should not die at a good old age.
Once more;—there are parents who are aware of the advance science has
made in education, but doubt the lawfulness of looking to science for aid in
the making of character. They see hereditary defects in their children, but
set them down as of “the natural fault and corruption of the nature of every
man which naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam.” This, they
believe, it is not their part to remedy; that is, unless the boy’s fault be of a
disturbing kind—a violent temper, for example—when the mother thinks no
harm to whip the offending Adam out of him. But so surely as we believe
the laws of the spiritual life to have been revealed to us, so, not less, surely,
though without the same sanctity, have been revealed the laws by which
body, mind, and moral nature flourish or decay. These it behoves us to make
ourselves acquainted with; and the Christian parent who is shy of science,
and prefers to bring up his children by the light of Nature when that of
authoritative revelation fails, does so to his children’s irreparable loss.
If the race is advancing, it is along the lines of character, for each new
generation inherits and adds to the best that has gone before it. We should

have to-day the very flower and fruit that has been a-preparing through long
lines of progenitors. Children have always been lovely, so far back as that
day when a little child in the streets of Jerusalem was picked up and set in
the midst to show of what sort are the princes in the Kingdom to come:—
“In the Kingdom are the children—
You may read it in their eyes;
All the freedom of the Kingdom
In their careless humour lies.”

And what mother has not bowed before the princely heart of innocence in
her own little child? But apart from this, of their glad living in the sunshine
of the Divine Countenance, surely our children are “more so” than those of
earlier days. Never before was a “Jackanapes” written, or the “Story of a
Short Life.” Shakespeare never made a child, nor Scott, hardly Dickens,
often as he tried; either we are waking up to what is in them, or the children
are indeed advancing in the van of the times, holding in light grasp the
gains of the past, the possibilities of the future. It is the age of child-
worship; and very lovely are the well-brought-up children of Christian and
cultured parents. But, alas! how many of us degrade the thing we love!
Think of the multitude of the innocents to be launched on the world, already
mutilated, spiritually and morally, at the hands of doting parents.
The duteous father and mother, on the contrary, who discern any lovely
family trait in one of their children, set themselves to nourish and cherish it
as a gardener the peaches he means to show. We know how “that kiss made
me a painter,” that is, warmed into life whatever art faculty the child had.
The choicer the plant, the gardener tells us, the greater the pains must he
take with the rearing of it: and here is the secret of the loss and waste of
some of the most beauteous and lovable natures the world has seen; they
have not had the pains taken with their rearing that their delicate, sensitive
organisations demanded. Think how Shelley was left to himself! We live in
embarrassing days. It is well to cry, “Give us light—more light and fuller;”
but what if the new light discover to us a maze of obligations, intricate and
tedious?
It is, at first sight, bewildering to perceive that for whatever distinctive
quality, moral or intellectual, we discern in the children, special culture is
demanded; but, after all, our obligation towards each such quality resolves

itself into providing for it these four things: nourishment, exercise, change,
and rest.
A child has a great turn for languages (his grandfather was the master of
nine); the little fellow “lisps in Latin,” learns his “mensa” from his nurse,
knows his declensions before he is five. What line is open to the mother
who sees such an endowment in her child? First, let him use it; let him learn
his declensions, and whatever else he takes to without the least sign of
effort. Probably the Latin case-endings come as easily and pleasantly to his
ear as does “See-saw, Margery Daw,” to the ordinary child, though no doubt
“Margery Daw” is the wholesomer kind of thing. Let him do just so much
as he takes to of his own accord; but never urge, never applaud, never show
him off. Next, let words convey ideas as he is able to bear them. Buttercup,
primrose, dandelion, magpie, each tells its own tale; daisy is day’s-eye,
opening with the sun, and closing when he sets—
“That well by reason it men callen may
The daïsie, or else the eye of day.”

Let him feel that the common words we use without a thought are beautiful,
full of story and interest. It is a great thing that the child should get the
ideas proper to the qualities inherent in him. An idea fitly put is taken in
without effort, and, once in, ideas behave like living creatures—they feed,
grow, and multiply. Next, provide him with some one delightful change of
thought, that is, with work and ideas altogether apart from his bent for
languages. Let him know, with friendly intimacy, every out-of-door object
that comes in his way—the red-start, the rose-chaffer, the ways of the
caddis-worm, forest trees, field flowers—all natural objects, common and
curious, near his home. No other knowledge is so delightful; not natural
science, but common acquaintance with natural objects.
Or, again, some one remarks that all our great inventors have in their
youth handled material—clay, wood, iron, brass, pigments. Let him work in
material. To provide a child with delightful resources on lines opposed to
his natural bent is the one way of keeping a quite sane mind in the presence
of an absorbing pursuit.
At the same time, change of occupation is not rest: if a man ply a
machine, now with his foot, and now with his hand, the foot or the hand
rests, but the man does not. A game of romps (better, so far as mere rest

goes, than games with laws and competitions), nonsense talk, a fairy tale, or
to lie on his back in the sunshine, should rest the child, and of such as these
he should have his fill.
This, speaking broadly, is the rationale of the matter:—just as actually
as we sew or write through the instrumentality of the hand, so the child
learns, thinks, feels, by means of a material organ—the very delicate
nervous tissue of the cerebrum. Now this tissue is constantly and rapidly
wearing away. The more it is used, whether in the way of mental effort or
emotional excitement, the more it wears away. Happily, rapid new growth
replaces the waste, wherefore, work and consequent waste of tissue are
necessary. But let the waste get ahead of the gain, and lasting mischief
happens. Therefore never let the child’s brain-work exceed his chances of
reparation, whether such work come in the way of too hard lessons, or of
the excitement attending childish dissipations. Another plea for abundant
rest:—one thing at a time, and that done well, appears to be Nature’s rule;
and his hours of rest and play are the hours of the child’s physical growth—
witness the stunted appearance of children who are allowed to live in a
whirl of small excitements.
A word more as to the necessity of change of thought for the child who
has a distinct bent. The brain tissue not only wastes with work, but, so to
speak, wastes locally. We all know how done up we are after giving our
minds for a few hours or days to any one subject, whether anxious or
joyous: we are glad at last to escape from the engrossing thought, and find it
a weariness when it returns upon us. It would appear that, set up the
continuous working of certain ideas, and a certain tract of the brain
substance is, as it were, worn out and weakened with the constant traffic in
these ideas. And this is of more consequence when the ideas are moral than
when they are merely intellectual. Hamlet’s thoughts play continuously
round a few distressing facts; he becomes morbid, not entirely sane; in a
word, he is eccentric. Now, possibly, eccentricity is a danger against which
the parents of well-descended children must be on the watch. These are
born with strong tendencies to certain qualities and ways of thinking. Their
bringing up tends to accentuate their qualities; the balance between these
and other qualities is lost, and they become eccentric persons. Mr. Matthew
Arnold writes down the life and the work of a great poet as ineffectual; and
this is, often enough, the verdict passed upon the eccentric. Whatever force

of genius and of character, whatever lovely moral traits they may have, the
world will not take them as guides for good, unless they do as others do in
things lawful and expedient; and truly there is a broad margin for originality
in declining to hunt with the hounds in things neither lawful nor expedient.
Now, practically, what is the mother’s course who notices in her most
promising child little traits of oddity? He does not care much for games,
does not get on well with the rest, has some little den of his own where he
ruminates. Poor little fellow! he wants a confidante badly; most likely he
has tried nurse and brothers and sisters, to no purpose. If this go on, he will
grow up with the idea that nobody wants him, nobody understands him, will
take his slice of life and eat it (with a snarl) all by himself. But if his mother
have tact enough to get at him, she will preserve for the world one of its
saving characters. Depend upon it there is something at work in the child—
genius, humanity, poetry, ambition, pride of family. It is that he wants outlet
and exercise for an inherited trait almost too big for his childish soul. Rosa
Bonheur was observed to be a restless child whose little shoes of life were a
misfit: lessons did not please her, and play did not please her; and her artist
father hit on the notion of soothing the child’s divine discontent by—
apprenticing her to a needlewoman! Happily she broke her bonds, and we
have her pictures. In the case of pride of birth, it is well that the child
should be brought face to face and heart to heart with the “great humility”
of our Pattern. But that being done, this sense of family distinction is a
wonderful lever to raise the little world of the child’s nature. Noblesse
oblige. He must needs add honour and not dishonour to a distinguished
family. I know of a little boy who bears two distinguished family names—
Browning-Newton, let us say. He goes to a preparatory school, where it is
the custom to put the names of defaulters on the blackboard. By-and-by, his
little brother went to school too, and the bigger boy’s exordium was:
—“We’ll never let two such names as ours be stuck up on the blackboard!”
Amongst the immediate causes of eccentricity is the dreariness of daily
living, the sense of which falls upon us all at times, and often with deadly
weight upon the more finely strung and highly gifted. “Oh, dear! I wish I
was in Jupiter!” sighed a small urchin who had already used up this planet.
It rests with the parents to see that the dreariness of a motiveless life does
not settle, sooner or later, on any one of their children. We are made with a
yearning for the “fearful joy” of passion; and if this do not come to us in

lawful ways, we look for it in eccentric, or worse, in illegitimate courses.
The mother, to whom her child is as an open book, must find a vent for the
restless working of his nature—the more apt to be troubled by—
“The burden of the mystery,
The heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world”—

the more finely he is himself organised. Fill him with the enthusiasm of
humanity. Whatever gifts he has, let them be cultivated as “gifts for men.”
“The thing best worth living for is to be of use,” was well said lately by a
thinker who has left us. The child into whose notion of life that idea is fitted
will not grow up to find time heavy on his hands. The life blessed with an
enthusiasm will not be dull; but a weight must go into the opposite scale to
balance even the noblest enthusiasm. As we have said, open for him some
door of natural science, some way of mechanical skill; in a word, give the
child an absorbing pursuit and a fascinating hobby, and you need not fear
eccentric or unworthy developments. It seems well to dwell at length on this
subject of eccentricity, because the world loses a great deal by its splendid
failures, the beautiful human beings who through one sort of eccentricity or
another become ineffectual for the raising of the rest of us.

FOOTNOTES:
[6]
“Vom Vater hab’ ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen;
Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur,
Und Lust zu fabuliren.”

CHAPTER IX

THE CULTURE OF CHARACTER

Part II

Suppose the parent see that the formation of character is the ultimate object
of education; see, too, that character is, in the rough, the inherited
tendencies of the child, modified by his surroundings, but that character
may be debased or ennobled by education; that it is the parents’ part to
distinguish the first faint budding of family traits—to greet every fine trait
as the highest sort of family possession to be nourished and tended with
care; to keep up at the same time the balance of qualities by bringing
forward that which is of little account—the more so when they must deliver
their child from eccentricity, pitfall to the original and forceful nature;—
suppose they have taken all this into the rôle of their duties, there yet
remains much for parents to do.
We are open to what the French call the defects of our qualities; and as
ill weeds grow apace, the defects of a fine character may well choke out the
graces. A little maiden loves with the passion and devotion of a woman, but
she is exacting of return, and jealous of intrusion, even with her mother. A
boy is ambitious; he will be leader in the nursery, and his lead is wholesome
for the rest; but there is the pugnacious little brother who will not “follow
my leader,” and the two can hardly live in the same rooms. The able boy is
a tyrant when his will is crossed. There is the timid, affectionate little maid
who will even tell a fib to shield her sister; and there is the high-spirited girl
who never lies, but who does, now and then, bully; and so on, without end.
What is the parents’ part here? To magnify the quality; make the child feel
that he or she has a virtue to guard—a family possession, and, at the same
time, a gift from above. A little simple reasonable teaching may help. But
let us beware of much talk. “Have you quite finished, mother?” said a bright

little girl of five in the most polite way in the world. She had listened long
to her mother’s sermonising, and had many things on hand. A wise word
here and there may be of use, but much more may be done by carefully
hindering each “defect of its quality” from coming into play. Give the ill
weeds no room to grow. Then, again, the defect may often be reclaimed and
turned back to feed the quality itself. The ambitious boy’s love of power
may be worked into a desire to win by love his restive little brother. The
passion of the loving girl may be made to include all whom her mother
loves.
There is another aspect of the subject of heredity and the duties it entails.
As the child of long lineage may well inherit much of what was best in his
ancestors—fine physique, clear intellect, high moral worth—so also he has
his risks. As some one puts it, not all the women have been brave, nor all
the men chaste. We know how the tendency to certain forms of disease runs
in families. Temper and temperament, moral and physical nature alike, may
come down with a taint. An unhappy child may, by some odd freak of
nature, appear to have left out the good and taken into him only the
unworthy. What can the parents do in such a case? They may not reform
him—perhaps that is beyond human skill and care, once he has become all
that is possible to his nature—but transform him, so that the being he was
calculated to become never develops at all; but another being comes to light
blest with every grace of which he had only the defect. This brings us to a
beneficent law of nature, which underlies the whole subject of early
training, and especially so this case of the child whose mother must bring
him forth a second time into a life of beauty and harmony. To put it in an
old form of words—the words of Thomas à Kempis—what seems to me the
fundamental law of education is no more than this: “Habit is driven out by
habit.” People have always known that “Use is second nature,” but the
reason why, and the scope of the saying, these are discoveries of recent
days.
A child has an odious custom, so constant, that it is his quality, will be
his character if you let him alone; he is spiteful, he is sly, he is sullen. No
one is to blame for it; it was born in him. What are you to do with such
inveterate habit of nature? Just this; treat it as a bad habit, and set up the
opposite good habit. Henry is more than mischievous; he is a malicious
little boy. There are always tears in the nursery, because, with “pinches,

nips, and bobs,” he is making some child wretched. Even his pets are not
safe; he has done his canary to death by poking at it with a stick through the
bars of its cage; howls from his dog, screeches from his cat, betray him in
some vicious trick. He makes fearful faces at his timid little sister; sets traps
with string for the housemaid with her water-cans to fall over; there is no
end to the malicious tricks, beyond the mere savagery of untrained
boyhood, which come to his mother’s ear. What is to be done? “Oh, he will
grow out of it!” say the more hopeful who pin their faith to time. But many
an experienced mother will say, “You can’t cure him; what is in will out,
and he will be a pest to society all his life.” Yet the child may be cured in a
month if the mother will set herself to the task with both hands and set
purpose; at any rate, the cure may be well begun, and that is half done.
Let the month of treatment be a deliciously happy month to him, he
living all the time in the sunshine of his mother’s smile. Let him not be left
to himself to meditate or carry out ugly pranks. Let him feel himself always
under a watchful, loving, and approving eye. Keep him happily occupied,
well amused. All this, to break the old custom which is assuredly broken
when a certain length of time goes by without its repetition. But one habit
drives out another. Lay new lines in the old place. Open avenues of
kindness for him. Let him enjoy, daily, hourly, the pleasure of pleasing. Get
him into the way of making little plots for the pleasure of the rest—a
plaything of his contriving, a dish of strawberries of his gathering, shadow
rabbits to amuse the baby; take him on kind errands to poor neighbours,
carrying and giving of his own. For a whole month the child’s whole heart
is flowing out in deeds and schemes and thoughts of loving-kindness, and
the ingenuity which spent itself in malicious tricks becomes an acquisition
to his family when his devices are benevolent. Yes; but where is his mother
to get time in these encroaching days to put Henry under special treatment?
She has other children and other duties, and simply cannot give herself up
for a month or a week to one child. If the boy were ill, in danger, would she
find time for him then? Would not other duties go to the wall, and leave her
little son, for the time, her chief object in life? Now here is a point all
parents are not enough awake to—that mental and moral ailments require
prompt, purposeful, curative treatment, to which the parents must devote
themselves for a short time, just as they would to a sick child. Neither
punishing him nor letting him alone—the two lines of treatment most in
favour—ever cured a child of any moral evil. If parents recognised the

efficacy and the immediate effect of treatment, they would never allow the
spread of ill weeds. For let this be borne in mind, whatever ugly quality
disfigures the child, he is but as a garden overgrown with weeds, the more
prolific the weeds, the more fertile the soil; he has within him every
possibility of beauty of life and character. Get rid of the weeds and foster
the flowers. It is hardly too much to say that most of the failures in life or
character made by man or woman are due to the happy-go-lucky philosophy
of the parents. They say, “The child is so young; he does not know any
better; but all that will come right as he grows up.” Now, a fault of character
left to itself can do no other than strengthen.
An objection may be raised to this counsel of short and determined
curative treatment. The good results do not last, it is said; a week or two of
neglect, and you lose the ground gained: Henry is as likely as ever to grow
up of the “tiger” order, a Steerforth or a Grandcourt. Here science comes to
help us to cheerful certainty.
There is no more interesting subject of inquiry open just now than that of
the interaction between the thoughts of the mind and the configuration of
the brain. The fair conclusion appears to be that each is greatly the cause of
the other; that the character of the persistent thoughts actually shapes the
cerebrum, while on the configuration of this organ depends in turn the
manner of thoughts we think. Now, thought is, for the most part, automatic.
We think, without intention or effort, as we have been accustomed to think,
just as we walk or write without any conscious arrangement of muscles.
Mozart could write an overture, laughing all the time at the little jokes his
wife made to keep him awake; to be sure he had thought it out before, and
there it was, ready to be written; but he did not consciously try for these
musical thoughts, they simply came to him in proper succession. Coleridge
thought “Kubla Khan” in his sleep, and wrote it when he awoke; and,
indeed, he might as well have been asleep all the time for all he had to do
with the production of most of his thoughts.
“Over the buttons she falls asleep,
And stitches them on in a dream,”—

is very possible and likely. For one thing which we consciously set
ourselves to think about, a thousand words and acts come from us every day
of their own accord; we don’t think of them at all. But all the same, only a
poet or a musician could thus give forth poetry or music, and it is the words

and acts which come from us without conscious thought which afford the
true measure of what we are. Perhaps this is why such serious weight is
attached to our every “idle word”—words spoken without intention or
volition.
We are getting, by degrees, to Henry and his bad habits. Somehow or
other, the nervous tissue of the cerebrum “grows to” the thoughts that are
allowed free course in the mind. How, Science hardly ventures to guess as
yet; but, for the sake of illustration, let us imagine that certain thoughts of
the mind run to and fro in the nervous substance of the cerebrum until they
have made a way there: busy traffic in the same order of thoughts will
always be kept up, for there is the easy way for them to run in. Now, take
the child with an inherited tendency to a resentful temper: he has begun to
think resentful thoughts: finds them easy and gratifying; he goes on;
evermore the ugly traffic becomes more easy and natural, and resentfulness
is rapidly becoming himself, that trait in his character which people couple
with his name.
But one custom overcomes another. The watchful mother sets up new
tracks in other directions; and she sees to it, that while she is leading new
thoughts through the new way, the old, deeply worn “way of thinking” is
quite disused. Now, the cerebrum is in a state of rapid waste and rapid
growth. The new growth takes shape from the new thoughts: the old is lost
in the steady waste, and the child is reformed, physically as well as morally
and mentally. That the nervous tissue of the cerebrum should be thus the
instrument of the mind need not surprise us when we think how the muscles
and joints of the tumbler, the vocal organs of the singer, the finger-ends of
the watchmaker, the palate of the tea-taster, grow to the uses they are
steadily put to; and, much more, both in the case of brain and of bodily
organs, grow to the uses they are earliest put to.
This meets in a wonderful way the case of the parent who sets himself to
cure a moral failing. He sets up the course of new thoughts, and hinders
those of the past, until the new thoughts shall have become automatic and
run of their own accord. All the time a sort of disintegration is going on in
the place that held the disused thoughts; and here is the parent’s advantage.
If the boy return (as, from inherited tendency, he still may do) to his old
habits of thought, behold there is no more place for them in his physical

being; to make a new place is a work of time, and in this work the parent
can overtake and hinder him without much effort.
Here, indeed, more than anywhere, “Except the Lord build the house,
they labour but in vain that build it;” but surely intelligent co-operation in
this divine work is our bounden duty and service. The training of the will,
the instruction of the conscience, and, so far as it lies with us, the
development of the divine life in the child, are carried on simultaneously
with this training in the habits of a good life; and these last will carry the
child safely over the season of infirm will, immature conscience, until he is
able to take, under direction from above, the conduct of his life, the
moulding of his character into his own hands. It is a comfort to believe that
there is even a material register of our educational labours being made in
the very substance of the child’s brain; and, certainly, here we have a note
of warning as to the danger of letting ill ways alone in the hope that all will
come right by-and-by.
Some parents may consider all this as heavy hearing; that even to “think
on these things” is enough to take the joy and spontaneousness out of their
sweet relationship; and that, after all, parents’ love and the grace of God
should be sufficient for the bringing up of children. No one can feel on this
subject more sincere humility than those who have not the honour to be
parents; the insight and love with which parents—mothers most so—are
blest, is a divine gift which fills lookers-on with reverence, even in many a
cottage home; but we have only to observe how many fond parents make
foolish children to be assured that something more is wanted. There are
appointed ways, not always the old paths, but new ones, opened up step by
step as we go. The labour of the mother who sets herself to understand her
work is not increased, but infinitely lightened; and as for life being made
heavy with the thought of these things, once make them our own, and we
act upon them as naturally as upon such knowledge—scientific also—as,
loose your hold of a cup—and it falls. A little painstaking thought and effort
in the first place, and all comes easy.

CHAPTER X

BIBLE LESSONS
“The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards,—the problems of mathematics to
puzzles and riddles.... There wants but one step further, and the Creed and Ten Commandments may
be taught in the same manner, without the necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of recital, and
devout attention hitherto exacted from the well-governed childhood of this realm.”—Waverley.

That parents should make over the religious education of their children to a
Sunday-school is, no doubt, as indefensible as if they sent them for their
meals to a table maintained by the public bounty. We “at home” plead “not
guilty” to this particular count. Our Sunday-schools are used by those toil-
worn and little-learned parents who are willing to accept at the hands of the
more leisured classes this service of the religious teaching of their children.
That is, the Sunday-school is, at present, a necessary evil, an
acknowledgment that there are parents so hard pressed that they are unable
for their first duty. Here we have the theory of the Sunday-school—the
parents who can, teach their children at home on Sunday, and substitutes
step in to act for those who can not. It is upon this delightful theory of the
Sunday-school that a clergyman[7] at the Antipodes has taken action. Never
does it appear to occur to him that the members of the upper and middle
classes do not need to be definitely and regularly instructed in religion
—“from a child.” His contention is, only, that such children should not be
taught at Sunday-school, but at home, and by their parents; and the main
object of his parochial “Parents’ Union” is to help parents in this work.
These are some of the rules:—
1. The object of the Union shall be to unite, strengthen, and assist fathers
and mothers in the discharge of their parental duties.
2. Members shall be pledged, by the fact of their joining, to supervise the
education of their own children, and to urge the responsibility of the
parental relationship upon other parents.

3. Lesson sketches shall be furnished monthly to each family in
connection with the Union.
4. Members shall bring their children to the monthly catechising, and sit
with them, &c., &c.
Probably the “lesson-sketches” are to secure that the children do just
such Bible-lessons at home with their parents on Sunday as they have
hitherto done at the Sunday-school with teachers.
It seems to be contemplated that parents of every class will undertake
their proper duties in this matter, and that the Sunday-school may be
allowed to drop, the clergyman undertaking instead to ascertain, by means
of catechising, that certain work is done month by month.
The scheme seems full of promise. Nothing should do more to
strengthen the bonds of family life than that the children should learn
religion at the lips of their parents; and, to grow up in a church which takes
constant heed of you from baptism or infancy, until, we will not say
confirmation, but through manhood and womanhood, until the end, should
give the right tone to corporate life.
No doubt we have parishes, and even whole denominations, in which the
young people are taken hold of from first to last; but then it is by clergy,
teachers, class leaders, and so on; and all parents do not regard it as an
unmixed blessing that the most serious part of their children’s training
should be undertaken by outsiders. The thing that seems most worthy of
imitation in this Australian movement is, that parents themselves are
recognised as the fit instructors of their children in the best things, and that
they are led to acknowledge some responsibility to the Church with regard
to the instruction they give.
But do we manage these things so well “at home” that we have no
occasion to look about us for hints? It may be in the memories of some of
us, that in May 1889, a Committee of the House of Laymen for the
Province of Canterbury was appointed to examine into the religious
education of the upper and middle classes.[8] The committee considered that
they might obtain a good basis for their investigations by examining into
the religious knowledge of boys entering school. They sent a paper of
inquiries to sixty-two head-masters, most of whom sent replies; and from

these replies the committee were led to conclude that, “for the most part, the
standard of religious education attained by boys before going to school is
far below what might be hoped or expected; and that even this standard,
thus ascertained to be far too low, is deteriorating; and further, that the chief
cause of deterioration is considered to be the want of home-teaching and
religion.”
Here is matter of grave consideration for us all—for, though the
investigation was conducted by Churchmen, it naturally covered boys of
various denominations attending public and middle-class schools; the
distinctive character of the religious education was the subject of separate
inquiry. No doubt there are many beautiful exceptions—families brought up
in quiet homes in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; but if it is, as
some of us fear, a fact that there is a tendency among parents of the middle
and upper classes to let the religious education of their children take care of
itself, it is worth while to ask, What is the reason? and, What is the remedy?
Many reasons are assigned for this alleged failure in parental duty—social
claims, the restive temper of the young people and their impatience of
religious teaching, and much else. But these reasons are inadequate. Parents
are, on the whole, very much alive to their responsibilities; perhaps there
has never been a generation more earnest and conscientious than the young
parents of these days. All the same, these thoughtful young parents do not
lay themselves out to teach their children religion, before all things.
The fact is, our religious life has suffered, and by-and-by our national
character will suffer, for the discredit thrown upon the Bible by adverse
critics. We rightly regard the Bible as the entire collection of our Sacred
Books. We have absolutely nothing to teach but what we find written
therein. But we no longer go to the Bible with the old confidence: our
religion is fading into a sentiment, not easy to impart; we wait until the
young people shall conceive it for themselves. Meantime, we give them
such æsthetic culture as should tend to develop those needs of the soul that
find their satisfaction in worship. The whole superstructure of “liberal”
religious thought is miserably shaky, and no wonder there is some shrinking
from exposing it to the Ithuriel’s spear of the definite and searching young
mind. For we love this flimsy habitation we have builded. It bears a
shadowy resemblance to the old home of our souls, and we cling to it with a
tender sentiment which the younger generation might not understand.

Are we then unhoused? Undoubtedly we are upon one assumption—that
assumption which it takes a brilliant novelist to put forth in its naked
asperity—“Miracles do not happen.” The educated mind is more essentially
logical than we are apt to suppose. Remove the keystone of miracle and the
arch tumbles about our ears. The ostentatious veneration for the Person of
Christ, as separated from the “mythical” miraculous element, is, alas! no
more than a spurious sentiment toward a self-evolved conception. Eliminate
the “miraculous” and the whole fabric of Christianity disappears; and not
only so, what have we to do with that older revelation of “the Lord, the
Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious”? Do we say, Nay, we keep
this; here is no miracle; and, of Christ, have we not the inimitable Sermon
on the Mount—sufficient claim on our allegiance? No, we have not; therein
are we taught to pray, to consider the lilies of the field and the fowls of the
air, and to remember that the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Here
we have the doctrine of the personal dealing, the particular providence of
God, which is of the very essence of miracle. If “miracles do not happen,” it
is folly and presumption to expect in providence and invite in prayer the
faintest disturbance of that course of events which is fixed by inevitable
law. The educated mind is severely logical, though an effort of the will may
keep us from following out our conclusions to the bitter end. What have we
left? A God who, of necessity, can have no personal dealings with you or
me, for such dealings would be of the nature of a miracle: a God, prayer to
whom, in the face of such certainty, becomes blasphemous. How dare we
approach the Highest with requests which, in the nature of things (as we
conceive), it is impossible He should grant?
We cannot pray, and we cannot trust, may be; yet we are not utterly
godless; we can admire, adore, worship, in uttermost humility. But how?
What shall we adore? The Divine Being can be known to us only through
His attributes; He is a God of love and a God of justice; full of compassion
and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. But these are attributes
which can only be conceived of as in action, from Person to person. How be
gracious and merciful unless to a being in need of grace and mercy? Grant
that grace and mercy may modify the slightest circumstance in a man’s
existence, spiritual or temporal, and you grant the whole question of
“miracles”—that is, that it is possible to God to act otherwise than through
such inevitable laws as we are able to recognise. Refuse to concede “the

miraculous element,” and the Shepherd of Israel has departed from our
midst; we are left orphaned in a world undone.
Such and so great are the issues of that question of “miracle” with which
we are fond of dallying, with a smile here and a shrug there, and a special
sneer for that story of the swine that ran violently down a steep place,
because we know so much about the dim thoughts of the brute creation—
living under our eyes, indeed, but curiously out of our ken. Grant the
possibility of miracles, that is, of the voluntary action of a Personal God,
and who will venture to assign limits of less or more?
How long halt we betwixt two opinions?—to the law and to the
testimony. Let us boldly accept the alternative which Hume proposes,
however superciliously. Let it be, that, “no testimony is sufficient to
establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood
would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.”
Even so. We believe that Christ rose again the third day and ascended into
heaven; or we credit the far more miraculous hypothesis that “there is no
God”; or, anyway, the God of revelation, in His adorable Personality, has
ceased to be for us. There is no middle way. Natural law, as we understand
it, has nothing to do with these issues; not that the Supreme abrogates His
laws, but that our knowledge of “natural law” is so agonisingly limited and
superficial, that we are incompetent to decide whether a break in the narrow
circle, within which our knowledge is hemmed, is or is not an opening into
a wider circle, where what appears to us as an extraordinary exception does
but exemplify the general rule.
We would not undervalue the solid fruits of Biblical criticism, even the
most adverse. This should be a great gain in the spiritual life—that,
henceforth, a miracle is accredited, not merely by the fact that it is recorded
in the sacred history, but by its essential fitness with the Divine Character;
just as, if we may reverently compare human things with divine, we say of a
friend, “Oh, he would never do that!” or, “That is just like him.” Tried by
this test, how unostentatious, simple, meekly serviceable are the miracles of
Christ; how utterly divine it is
“To have all power, and be as having none!”

The mind which is saturated with the Gospel story in all its sweet
reasonableness, which has absorbed the more confused and broken rays

wherein the Light of the World is manifested in Old Testament story, will
perhaps be the least tempted to the disloyalty of “honest doubt;”—for
disloyalty to the most close and sacred of all relationships it is, though we
must freely concede that such doubt is the infirmity of noble minds.
Believing that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, that
the man is established in the Christian faith according as the child has been
instructed, the question of questions for us is, how to secure that the
children shall be well grounded in the Scriptures by their parents, and shall
pursue the study with intelligence, reverence, and delight.

FOOTNOTES:
[7] The Rev. E. Jackson, sometime of Sydney.
[8] See “Report of the Committee of the House of Laymen for the Province of
Canterbury on the Duty of the Church with regard to the Religious Education of
the Upper and Middle Classes.”—Nat. Soc. Depository, Westminster.

CHAPTER XI

FAITH AND DUTY

Reviews

I

Education, properly understood, is the science of life, and every attempt to
formulate this science is to be hailed with interest, and with a measure of
gratitude in proportion to its success. Thinking minds everywhere are
engaged in furnishing their quota towards this great work, in one or another
of its aspects, physical, social, religious. We see at once the importance of
every attempt to solve social problems or problems of faith, as helping us to
understand those “laws of nature” and “ways of men,” the love, and dutiful
attitude of the will towards which Mr. Huxley considers to be the sole
practical outcome of education. We have before us three important works[9]
on these lines. One deals with the problems of “secular” morality from an
American point of view; the second with the whole problem of national
education from a French and “scientific” standpoint. The third is not
professedly an educational work. It deals with “the ways of men,” but with
the ways of men as they are concerned with the ways and will of God. That
is, it deals with the deep-seated springs out of which are the issues of life.
As the true educationalist works from within outwards, he will probably
find much aid in a work whose outlook on life is from the standpoint of
“faith.”
Mr. Felix Adler, in “The Moral Instruction of Children,” undertakes a by
no means easy task in setting himself to solve the problem of unsectarian
moral instruction. He brings unusual qualifications to the work—a wide
outlook, philosophic training, and that catholic love of literature and
knowledge of books which is essential to the teacher of morals. The work

before us is one which should find a place on every educated parent’s
bookshelves, not perhaps to be swallowed whole as a “complete guide,” but
to be studied with careful attention and some freedom of choice as to which
counsel of perfection is worthy to be acted upon, and which other counsel
may be rejected as not fitting in with that scheme of educational thought
which the parent has already made for himself. Mr. Adler is most seriously
handicapped at the outset. He writes for American schools, in which the
first condition of moral instruction is that it must be unsectarian. This he,
rightly or wrongly, interprets, to exclude all theistic teaching whatever; that
is to say, the child he writes for has no sanctions beyond those he finds in
his own breast. For example: “It is the business of the moral instructor in
the school to deliver to his pupils the subject-matter of morality, but not to
deal with the sanctions of it. He says to the pupil, ‘Thou shalt not lie.’ He
takes it for granted that the pupil feels the force of this commandment, and
acknowledges that he ought to yield obedience to it. For my part, I should
suspect of quibbling and dishonest intention any boy or girl who would ask
me, Why ought I not to lie? I should hold up before such a child the ought
in all its awful majesty. The right to reason about these matters cannot be
conceded until after the mind has attained a certain maturity.”
Where does the ought get its awful majesty? That there is in the human
breast an infallible sense of “ought” is an error prolific of much evil. It is a
popular idea to-day that it is right to do that which the doer holds to be
right; or, as it is popularly expressed, a man does all that can be expected of
him when he acts according to his “lights.” Now, a very slight acquaintance
with history demonstrates that every persecution and most outrages, from
the Inquisition to Thuggee, are the outcome of that same majesty of
“ought,” as it makes its voice heard in the breast of an individual or of a
community. To attempt to treat of morals without dealing with the sanctions
of morality is to work from the circumference instead of from the centre.
Moses, Moses und immer Moses! says a German pedagogue of the
modern school, who writes in hot disdain of the old school system, in which
ten or twelve, and, in some of the German States, fifteen or sixteen hours a
week were devoted to Bible-teaching. We in England, and they in America,
also rebel against the Bible as a class-book. Educationalists say there is so
much else to be learned, that this prolonged study of sacred literature is a
grievous waste of time; and many religious persons, on the other hand,

object on the ground that it is not good to make the Bible common as a
class-book. But it is singular that so few educationalists recognise that the
Bible is not a single book, but a classic literature of wonderful beauty and
interest; that, apart from its Divine sanctions and religious teaching, from
all that we understand by “Revelation,” the Bible, as a mere instrument of
education, is, at the very least as valuable as the classics of Greece or
Rome. Here is poetry, the rhythm of which soothes even the jaded brain
past taking pleasure in any other. Here is history, based on such broad, clear
lines, such dealing of slow and sure and even-handed justice to the nations,
such stories of national sins and national repentances, that the student
realises, as from no other history, the solidarity of the race, the brotherhood
—and, if we may call it so—the individuality of the nations. Here is
philosophy which, of all the philosophies which have been propounded, is
alone adequate to the interpretation of human life. We say not a word here
of that which is the raison d’être of the Bible—its teaching of religion, its
revelation of God to man; but, to say only one word more, all the literatures
of the world put together utterly fail to give us a system of ethics, in precept
and example, motive and sanction, complete as that to which we have been
born as our common inheritance in the Bible.
For 1700 years, roughly speaking, the Bible has been the school-book of
modern Europe; its teaching, conveyed directly or indirectly, more or less
pure, has been the basis upon which the whole superstructure of not only
religious but ethical and, to some extent, literary training rested. Now, the
Bible as a lesson-book is tabooed; and educationalists are called upon to
produce what shall take its place in the origination of ideas and the
formation of character. This is the task to which Mr. Adler sets himself; and
that he is at all successful is obviously due to the fact that his own mind is
impregnated with the Bible-lore and the sacred law which he does not feel
himself at liberty to propound to his students. But this prepossession of the
author’s makes his work very helpful and suggestive to parents who desire
to take the Bible as the groundwork and the sanction of that moral teaching
which they are glad to supplement from other sources.
May we recommend the following suggestion to parents:—
“Parents and teachers should endeavour to answer such questions as
these: When do the first stirrings of the moral sense appear in the child?
How do they manifest themselves? What are the emotional and the

intellectual equipments of the child at different periods, and how do these
correspond with its moral outfit? At what time does conscience enter on the
scene? To what acts or omissions does the child apply the terms right or
wrong? If observations of this kind were made with care and duly recorded,
the science of education would have at its disposal a considerable quantity
of material, from which, no doubt, valuable generalisations might be
deduced. Every mother, especially, should keep a diary in which to note the
successive phases of her child’s physical, mental, and moral growth, with
particular attention to the moral; so that parents may be enabled to make a
timely forecast of their children’s character, to foster in them every germ of
good, and by prompt precautions to suppress, or at least restrain, what is
bad.”
We are glad to find that Mr. Adler reinstates fairy tales. He says, justly,
that much of the selfishness of the world is due, not to actual hard-
heartedness, but to a lack of imaginative power; and adds, “I hold that
something, nay, much, has been gained if a child has learned to take the
wishes out of its heart, as it were, and to project them on the screen of
fancy.” The German Märchen hold the first place in his regards. He says:
“They represent the childhood of mankind, and it is for this reason that they
never cease to appeal to children.”
“But how shall we handle these Märchen? and what method shall we
employ in putting them to account for our special purpose? My first counsel
is, Tell the story. Do not give it to the child to read. The child, as it listens to
the Märchen, looks up with wide-opened eyes to the face of the person who
tells the story, and thrills responsive to the touch of the earlier life of the
race, which thus falls upon its own.” That is, our author feels, and rightly
so, that traditions should be orally delivered. This is well worth noting. His
second counsel is equally important. “Do not,” he says, “take the moral
plum out of the fairy tale pudding, but let the child enjoy it as a whole....
Treat the moral element as an incident, emphasise it indeed, but
incidentally. Pluck it as a wayside flower.”
Mr. Felix Adler’s third counsel is, to eliminate from the stories whatever
is merely superstitious, merely a relic of ancient animism, and, again,
whatever is objectionable on moral grounds. In this connection he discusses
the vexed question of how far we should acquaint children with the

existence of evil in the world. His conclusion is one with which we shall
probably be inclined to agree.
“My own view,” he says, “is that we should speak in the child’s hearing
only of those lesser forms of evil, physical or moral, with which it is
already acquainted.” On this ground he would rule out all the cruel step-
mother stories, the unnatural father stories, and so on; though, probably,
most of us would make an exception in favour of Cinderella, and its
charming German rendering Aschenbrödel.
Fables, according to our author, should form the basis of moral
instruction at the second stage; probably when children emerge from the
nursery. We have all grown up on “Æsop’s Fables,” and “The Dog in the
Manger,” “King Log,” “The Frog and the Stork,” have passed into the
current coinage of our thought. But it is interesting to be reminded that the
so-called Æsop’s fables are infinitely older than the famous Greek story-
teller, and are, for the most part, of Asiatic origin. We are reminded that it is
important to keep the origin of this fable before us, and exercise
discrimination in our choice of those which we use to convey moral ideas to
our children. Such fables as “The Oak and the Reed,” “The Brazen and the
Earthen Pot,” “The Kite and the Wolf,” Mr. Adler would reject, as breathing
of Eastern subserviency and fear. But possibly for the very reason that the
British backbone is little disposed to bow before man or circumstances, the
lessons of life culled by peoples of other habits and other thoughts may be
quite specially useful to the English child. Anyway, we should lose some of
the most charming fables if we cut out all that savours of the wisdom of the
East. The fables Mr. Felix Adler specially commends are those which hold
up virtue for our praise or evil for our censure; such as Cowardice, the fable
of the “Stag and the Fawn;” Vanity, “The Peacock and the Crane;”
Greediness, “The Dog and the Shadow.”
“In the third part of our primary course, we shall use selected stories
from the classical literature of the Hebrews, and later on from that of
Greece, particularly the ‘Odyssey’ and the ‘Iliad.’”
Here we begin to be at issue with our author. We should not present
Bible stories as carrying only the same moral sanction as the myths of
ancient Greece; neither should we defer their introduction until the child has
gone through a moral course of fairy tales and a moral course of fables. He

should not be able to recall a time before the sweet stories of old filled his
imagination; he should have heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden
in the cool of the evening; should have been an awed spectator where the
angels ascended and descended upon Jacob’s stony pillow; should have
followed Christ through the cornfield on the Sabbath-day, and sat in the
rows of the hungry multitudes—so long ago that the sacred scenes form the
unconscious background of his thoughts. All things are possible to the little
child, and the touch of the spiritual upon our material world, the difficult
problems, the hard sayings, which are an offence—in the Bible sense of the
word—to his elders, present no difficulties to the child’s all-embracing
faith. We would not say—far otherwise—that every Bible story is fit for
children, because it is a Bible story; neither would we analyse too carefully,
nor draw hard and fast lines to distinguish what we would call history from
that of which it may be said, “Without a parable spake He not unto them.”
The child is not an exegetical student. The moral teaching, the spiritual
revelations, the lovely imagery of the Bible, are the things with which he is
concerned, and of these he cannot have too much. As Mr. Adler says, “The
narrative of the Bible is saturated with the moral spirit, the moral issues are
everywhere to the forefront. Duty, guilt and its punishment, the conflict of
conscience with inclination, are the leading themes. The Hebrew people
seem to have been endowed with what may be called a moral genius, and
especially did they emphasise the filial and fraternal duties. Now, it is
precisely these duties that must be impressed on young children.”
Let us see how Mr. Adler would use the Bible narratives. We have only
space for a fragmentary sentence here and there: “Once upon a time there
were two children, Adam and Eve. Adam was a fine and noble-looking
lad.”... “It was so warm that the children never needed to go indoors.”...
“And the snake kept on whispering, ‘Just take one bite of it; nobody sees
you.’”... “You, Adam, must learn to labour, and you, Eve, to be patient and
self-denying for others,” &c.
We leave it to our readers to decide whether “treatment” improves the
Bible narrative, or whether this is the sort of thing to lay hold of a child’s
imagination.
Mr. Ruskin tells us that his incomparable style is due entirely to his early
familiarity with the Bible classics. It is a mistake to translate Bible stories

into slipshod English, even when the narrator keeps close to the facts of the
narrative. The rhythm and cadence of Biblical phraseology is as charming
to a child as to his elders, if not more so. Read your Bible story to the child,
bit by bit; get him to tell you in his own words (keeping as close as he can
to the Bible words) what you have read, and then, if you like, talk about it;
but not much. Above all, do not let us attempt a “practical commentary on
every verse in Genesis,” to quote the title of a work lately published.
Two points it seems worth while to dwell upon here. Is it advisable to
tell the children the stories of the Bible miracles in an age when the
possibility of miracles is so hotly discussed? In the first place, all that the
most advanced scientists have to urge against “miracles” is that precisely
such phenomena have not come under their personal notice; but they, before
all people, are open to admit that nothing is impossible and that no
experience is final. In the second place, as for the moral and spiritual
instruction which the story of the miracle affords, it is immaterial whether,
in the particular case in question, a historical fact is recorded, or whether, in
this case also, it is true that “without a parable spake He not unto them.” It
is the vital, not the historical, truth of the story which matters to the child.
As for the latter, he is a bold critic, and well in advance of the scientific
knowledge of the day, who ventures to say, “This is possible, that other is
impossible.”
The second point worthy of our attention in regard to Bible-teaching is,
Is the Bible to be taken whole and undivided, or to be dealt out to children
as they are able to bear it? There are recitals in the Bible which we certainly
should not put into the hands of children in any other book. We should do
well to ask ourselves gravely, if we have any warrant for supposing that our
children will be shielded from the suggestions of evil which we deliberately
lay before them; or if there is any Divine law requiring that the whole Bible
—which is not only the Word of God, but is also a collection of the legal,
literary, historical, poetical, philosophical, ethical, and polemical writings of
a nation—should be placed altogether and all at once in the hands of a
curious child, as soon as he is able to read? When will our superstitious
reverence for the mere letter of the Scriptures allow us to break the Bible
up, to be read, as all other literature is, in separate books; and, for the
children anyway, those passages “expunged” which are not fit for their
reading; and even those which are perfectly uninteresting, as, for example,

long genealogies? How delightful it would be that each birthday should
bring with it a gift of a new book of the Bible, progressing in difficulty from
year to year, beautifully bound and illustrated, and printed in clear, inviting
type and on good paper. One can imagine the Christian child collecting his
library of sacred books with great joy and interest, and making a diligent
and delighted study of the volume for the year in its appointed time. The
next best thing, perhaps, is to read bit by bit to the children, as beautifully
as may be, requiring them to tell the story, after listening, as nearly in the
Bible words as they can.
But to return to Mr. Adler. Here is a valuable suggestion: “Children
should be taught to observe moral pictures before any attempt is made to
deduce moral principles. But certain simple rules should be given to the
very young—must, indeed, be given them—for their guidance. Now, in the
legislation ascribed to Moses, we find a number of rules fit for children, and
a collection of these rules might be made for the use of schools, such as: Ye
shall not lie; ye shall not deceive one another; ye shall take no bribe; thou
shalt not go about as a tale-bearer among thy fellows,” and so on—a very
useful collection of sixteen rules by way of specimen.
Farther on we read, “The story of David’s life is replete with dramatic
interest. It may be arranged in a series of pictures. First picture, David and
Goliath—i.e., skill pitted against brute strength, or the deserved punishment
of a bully.” Conceive the barren, common, self-complete and self-
complacent product of “moral” teaching on this level!
In his treatment of the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad,” Mr. Adler makes some
good points: “My father, anxious that I should become a good man, made
me learn all the poems of Homer,” Xenophon makes one of his characters
say: and here we have suggestive lines as to how the great epics may be
used for example of life and instruction in manners.
What so inspiring as the story of Ulysses to the boy in search of
adventures? and what greater stimulus to courage, prudence, presence of
mind, than in the escapes of the hero? “Ulysses is the type of sagacity as
well as of bravery; his mind teems with inventions.” The ethical elements of
the “Odyssey” are said to be conjugal affection, filial conduct
(Telemachus), presence of mind, and veneration shown to grand-parents
(Laertes). Friendly relations with dependents might have been added, as

illustrated by the lovely story of the nurse Eurycleia recognising Ulysses
when his wife sat by with stony face. Friendship, again, in the story of
Achilles’ grief for Patroclus. Mr. Adler treats the Homeric stories with more
grace and sympathy, and with less ruthless violation, than he metes out to
those of the Bible, but here again we trace the initial weakness of “secular”
morality. The “Odyssey” and the “Iliad” are religious poems or they are
nothing. The whole motive is religious, every incident is supernaturally
directed. The heroic inspiration is entirely wanting, if we fail to bear in
mind that the characters do and suffer with superlative courage and
fortitude, only because they willed to do and suffer, in all things, the will of
the gods. The acquiescence of the will with that which they guessed,
however darkly, of the divine will, is the truly inspiring quality of the
Homeric heroes; and here, as much as in the teaching of Bible morality,
“secular” ethics are at fault.
The third section of Mr. Adler’s work consists of lessons on duty. Here
again we have excellent counsels and delightful illustrations. “The teacher
should always take the moral habit for granted. He should never give his
pupils to understand that he and they are about to examine, whether, for
instance, it is wrong or not wrong to lie. The commandment against lying is
assumed, and its obligation acknowledged at the outset.” This we heartily
agree with, and especially we like the apparently inadvertent use of the
word “commandment,” which concedes the whole question at issue—that
is, that the idea of duty is a relative one, depending on an Authority
supreme and intimate, which embraces the thoughts of the heart and the
issues of the life.
The story of Hillel, as illustrating the duty of acquiring knowledge, is
very charming, and is deeply interesting to the psychologist, as illustrating
that a naturally implanted desire for knowledge is one of the springs of
action in the human breast. The motives proposed for seeking knowledge
are poor and inadequate; to succeed in life, to gain esteem, to satisfy
yourself, and even to be able, possibly, to benefit others, are by no means
soul-compelling motives. The child who is encouraged to learn, because to
learn is his particular duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to
call him, has the strongest of conceivable motives, in the sense that he is
rendering that which is required of him by the Supreme Authority.

This one note of feebleness runs through the whole treatment of the
subject. The drowning man is supposed to counsel himself to “be brave,
because as a human being you are superior to the forces of Nature, because
there is something in you—your moral self—over which the forces of
Nature have no power, because what happens to you in your private
character is not important; but it is important that you assert the dignity of
humanity to the last breath.” This reads rather well; but how much finer is
the attitude of the man who struggles manfully to save the life that God has
given him!
The chapter on the influence of manual training is well worthy of
consideration. The concluding sentence runs: “It is a cheering and
encouraging thought that technical labour, which is the source of our
material aggrandisement, may also become, when employed in the
education of the young, the means of enlarging their manhood, quickening
their intellect, and strengthening their character.”
We have taken up Mr. Adler’s work so fully because it is one of the most
serious and successful attempts with which we are acquainted to present a
graduated course of ethics suitable for children of all ages. Though we are
at issue with the author on the all-important point of moral sanctions, we
very earnestly commend the work to the perusal of parents. The Christian
parent will assuredly present the thought of Law in connection with a Law-
giver, and will supplement the thousand valuable suggestions he will find
here with his own strong conviction that “Ought” is of the Lord God. But
even the Christian child suffers from what may be called slipshod moral
teaching. The failings of the good are a source of sorrow and surprise to the
moralist as well as to the much-endeavouring and often-failing Christian
soul. That temptation and sin are inseparable from our present condition
may be allowed; but that an earnest and sincere Christian should be
habitually guilty of failing in candour, frankness, justice to the characters
and opinions of others, should be intemperate in censure, and—dare we say
it?—spiteful in criticism, is possibly to be traced, not to fallible human
nature, but to defective education.
The ethical idea has never been fairly and fully presented to the mind on
these vulnerable points. The man is unable to give due weight to the
opinions of another, because the child has not been instructed in the duty of
candour. There is little doubt that careful, methodical, ethical instruction,

with abundant illustration, and—we need not add—inspired by the thought,
“God wills it,” should, if such instruction could be made general, have an
appreciable effect in elevating the national character. Therefore, let us
repeat, we hail with gratitude such a contribution to the practical ethics of
the nursery and schoolroom as Mr. Adler’s work on “The Moral Instruction
of Children.”

FOOTNOTES:
[9] “The Moral Instruction of Children.” 6s. By Felix Adler. Published by
Edward Arnold.
“Education from a National Standpoint.” By Alfred Fouillée. Translated and
edited by W. J. Greenstreet, M.A. Published by Edward Arnold.
“Faith.” Eleven Sermons, with a Preface, by Rev. H. C. Beeching. Published by
Percival & Co.

CHAPTER XII

FAITH AND DUTY

II

Since Locke established a school of English educational thought, based on
English philosophy, our tendency has been exclusively towards naturalism,
if not materialism; to the exclusion of a vital element in education—the
force of the idea.
Madame de Staël has a remarkable passage concerning this tendency in
English philosophy which, though we may not be disposed to admit her
conclusions en bloc, should certainly give us pause, and lead us to consider
whether we should not wisely modify the tendencies of our national thought
by laying ourselves open to foreign influences:—

“Hobbes prit à la lettre la philosophie qui fait dériver toutes nos idées
des impressions des sens; il n’en craignit point les conséquences, et il a dit
hardiment que l’âme était, soumise à la nécessité comme la société au
despotisme. Le culte des tous les sentiments élévés et purs est tellement
consolidé en Angleterre par les institutions politiques et religieuses, que les
spéculations de l’esprit tournent autour de ces imposantes colonnes sans
jamais les ébranler. Hobbes eut donc peu de partizans dans son pays; mais
l’influence de Locke fut plus universelle. Comme son caractère était morale
et religieuse, il ne se permit aucun des raisonnements corrupteurs qui
dérivaient nécessairement de sa métaphysique; et la plupart de ses
compatriotes, en l’adoptant, ont eu comme lui la noble inconséquence de
séparer les résultats des principes, tandis que Hume et les philosophes
français, après avoir admis le système, l’ont appliqué d’une manière
beaucoup plus logique.
“La métaphysique de Locke n’a eu d’autre effet sur les esprits, en
Angleterre, que de ternir un peu leur originalité naturelle; quand même elle
dessécherait la source des grandes pensées philosophiques, elle ne saurait
détruire le sentiment religieux, qui sait si bien y suppléer; mais cette
métaphysique reçue dans le reste de l’Europe, l’Allemagne exceptée, a été
l’une des principales causes de l’immoralité dont on s’est fait une théorie
pour en mieux assurer la pratique.”
It is well that we should recognise the continuity of English educational
thought, and perceive that we have in Spencer and Baine the lineal
descendants of the earlier philosophers. Probably the chief source of
weakness in our attempt to formulate a science of education is that we do
not perceive that education is the outcome of philosophy. We deal with the
issue and ignore the source. Hence our efforts lack continuity and definite
aim. We are content to pick up a suggestion here, a practical hint there,
without even troubling ourselves to consider what is that scheme of life of
which such hints and suggestions are the output.
Mr. Greenstreet’s translation of M. Fouillée’s remarkable work[10]
should not be without its effect upon the burning questions of the hour. As
the translator well says in his preface: “The spirit of reform is in the air; the
question of the retention of Greek at the Universities is but a ripple of the
great wave that seems ready to burst upon us and to obliterate the
characteristic features of our national system of education.... A glance at the

various forms of the educational systems obtaining in Europe and America
is sufficient to betray to the observant eye how near to the verge of chaos
we are standing.”
These are words of insight and wisdom, but let us not therefore despair
as though the end of all things were at hand. The truth is, we are in the
throes of an educational revolution; we are emerging from chaos rather than
about to plunge into it; we are beginning to recognise that education is the
applied science of life, and that we really have existing material in the
philosophy of the ages and the science of the day to formulate an
educational code whereby we may order the lives of our children and
regulate our own. We need not aspire to a complete and exhaustive code of
educational laws. This will come to us duly when humanity has, so to
speak, fulfilled itself. Meantime, we have enough to go on with if we would
believe it. What we have to do is to gather together and order our resources;
to put the first thing foremost and all things in sequence, and to see that
education is neither more nor less than the practical application of our
philosophy. Hence, if our educational thought is to be sound and effectual,
we must look to the philosophy which underlies it, and must be in a
condition to trace every counsel of perfection for the bringing up of
children to one or other of the two schools of philosophy of which it must
needs be the outcome.
Is our system of education to be the issue of naturalism or of idealism, or
is there indeed a media via? This is practically the question which M.
Fouillée sets himself to answer in the spirit of a philosophical
educationalist. He examines his premisses and draws his deductions with a
candour, culture, and philosophic insight which carry the confidence of the
reader. No doubt he is of a mind with that umpire in a cricket-match who
lays down the dictum that one must be quite fair to both sides with a little
leaning to one’s own. M. Fouillée takes sides with classical as opposed to
scientific culture. But he is not a mere partisan; he has philosophic reasons
for the faith that is in him, and his examination of the question of national
education is full of instruction and inspiration for the thoughtful parent as
well as for the schoolmaster.
M. Fouillée gives in his preamble a key to his treatment of the subject.
He says:

“On this as on all great questions of practical philosophy Guyau has left
his mark.... He has treated the question from the highest standpoint, and has
treated it in a strictly scientific form. ‘Given the hereditary merits and faults
of a race, how far can we modify existing heredity by means of education
for a new heredity?’ For the problem is nothing less than this. It is not
merely a matter of the instruction of individuals, but of the preservation and
improvement of the race. Education must therefore be based upon the
physiological and moral laws of the culture of races.... The ethnical is the
true point of view. By means of education we must create such hereditary
tendencies as will be useful to the race both physically and intellectually.”
M. Fouillée begins at the beginning. He examines the principle of
selection, and shows that it is a working principle, not only in animal, but in
intellectual, æsthetic, and moral life. He demonstrates that there is what
may be called psychological selection, according to whose laws those ideas
which are the fittest rule the world; and it is in the light of this truth, of the
natural selection of ideas and of their enormous force, that he would
examine into the vexed question of the subjects and methods of education.
M. Fouillée complains with justice that no attempt has been made to
harmonise or unify education as a whole in any one civilised nation.
Controversy rages round quite secondary questions—whether education
shall be literary or scientific? and, again, whether the ancient or the modern
languages shall be taught? But science and literature do not exhaust the
field. Our author introduces a new candidate. He says:
“In this volume we shall inquire if the link between science and
literature is not to be found in the knowledge of man, of society, of the great
laws of the universe—i.e., in morals and social science and æsthetics, in a
word, in philosophy.”
Now this is the gist of the teaching which we have laboured to advance
in the Parents’ Union and its various agencies.
“The proper study of mankind is man,” is one of those “thoughts beyond
their thought” which poets light upon; and I am able to add my personal
testimony to the fact that under no other study with which I am acquainted
is it possible to trace such almost visible expansion of mind and soul in the
young student as in this of philosophy.

A peculiarly interesting and original line of thought, worked out very
fully in this volume, is, that just as the child with an individual bent should
have that bent encouraged and “educated,” so of a nation:—
“If social science rejects every mystical interpretation of the common
spirit animating a nation, it by no means rejects the reflected consciousness
or spontaneous divination, possessed by every nation, of the functions
which have devolved upon it.”
Here is a most fruitful suggestion. Think of the fitness of a scheme of
physical, intellectual, and moral training, based upon our ideal of the
English character and of the destiny of the English nation.
The chapter on “Power of Education and of Idea-Forces—Suggestions—
Heredity” is very valuable, as utilising a floating nebulæ of intuitions,
which are coming upon us in connection with the hundred and one hypnotic
marvels of the day. M. Fouillée maintains that—
“The power of instruction and education, denied by some and
exaggerated by others, being nothing but the power of ideas and sentiments,
it is impossible to be too exact in determining at the outset the extent and
limits of this force. This psychological problem is the foundation of
pedagogy.”
In a word, M. Fouillée returns boldly to the Platonic philosophy; the idea
is to him all in all, in philosophy and education. But he returns empty-
handed. The wave of naturalism, now perhaps on the ebb, has left neither
flotsam nor jetsam for him, save for stranded fragments of the Darwinian
theory. Now, we maintain that to this wave of thought, naturalistic,
materialistic—what you will—we owe the discovery of the physiological
basis of education.
While we believed that thought was purely volatile, incapable of impact
upon matter, or of being acted upon by matter, our theories of education
were necessarily vague. We could not catch our Ariel; how then could we
school him? But now, the physiologists have taught us that our wilful sprite
rests with the tips of his toes, at any rate, upon solid ground; nay more, his
foothold is none so slight but that it leaves footmarks behind, an impress on
that domain of the physical in which we are somewhat at home. The
impalpable thoughts that we think leave their mark upon the quite palpable

substance of the brain, set up, so the physiologists tell us, connections
between the nerve-cells of which that organ is composed; in fact, to make a
long story short, the cerebrum “grows to the uses it is earliest and most
constantly put to.” This fact opens up a function of education upon which
M. Fouillée hardly touches, that most important function of the formation of
habits—physical, intellectual, moral. “Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit,
reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” says Thackeray. And a
great function of the educator is to secure that acts shall be so regularly,
purposefully, and methodically sown that the child shall reap the habits of
the good life in thinking and doing, with the minimum of conscious effort.
We are only now beginning to discover how beneficial are the laws
which govern our being. Educate the child in these habits and the man’s life
will run in them, without the constant wear and tear of the moral effort of
decision. Once, twice, three times in a day, he will still, no doubt, have to
choose between the highest and the less high, the best and the less good
course. But all the minor moralities of life may be made habitual to him. He
has been brought up to be courteous, prompt, punctual, neat, considerate;
and he practises these virtues without conscious effort. It is much easier to
behave in the way he is used to, than to originate a new line of conduct.
And this is so, because it is graciously and mercifully ordered that there
shall be a physical record and adaptation as the result of our educational
efforts; and that the enormous strain of moral endeavour shall come upon us
only occasionally. “Sow a habit, reap a character;” that is, the formation of
habits is the chief means whereby we modify the original hereditary
disposition of the child until it becomes the character of the man.
But even in this physiological work, the spiritual force of the idea has its
part to play. For a habit is set up by following out an initial idea with a long
sequence of corresponding acts. You tell a child that the Great Duke slept in
so narrow a bed that he could not turn over, because, said he, “When you
want to turn over it’s time to get up.” The boy does not wish to get up in the
morning; but he does wish to be like the hero of Waterloo. You stimulate
him to act upon this idea day after day for a month or so, until the habit is
formed, and it is just as easy as not to get up in good time.
The functions of education may be roughly defined as twofold; (a) the
formation of habits; (b) the presentation of ideas. The first depends far more
largely than we recognise on physiological processes. The second is purely

spiritual in origin, method, and result. Is it not possible that here we have
the meeting-point of the two philosophies which have divided mankind
since men began to think about their thoughts and ways? Both are right;
both are necessary; both have their full activity in the development of a
human being at his best. The crux of modern thought, as indeed of all
profound thought, is, Is it conceivable that the spiritual should have any
manner of impact upon the material? Every problem, from the education of
a little child to the Divine Incarnation, turns upon this point. Conceive this
possibility and all is plain, from the marvels resulting from hypnotic
suggestion to the miracles of our faith. We can even believe what we are
told, that, by an effort of passionate concentration of thought and feeling the
devout may arrive at the figure of the stigmata upon hands and feet. With
this key nothing is impossible to our faith, all we ask for is precedent. And
after all, this inter-action of forces is the most common and every-day of
our experiences. What is it but the impact of spirit upon matter which writes
upon the face of flesh that record of character and conduct which we call
countenance. And not only upon the face. He is a dull scholar in the lore of
human nature, who cannot read a man fairly well from a back view. The
sculptor knows the trick of it. There is a statue of the late Prince Consort in
Edinburgh in which representative groups pay homage to the Prince. Stand
so as to get the back view of any one of them and the shoulders of scholar,
soldier, peasant, artisan, tell unmistakably the tale of their several lives.
What is this but the impress of spirit upon matter!
Anyway we are on the horns of a dilemma. There is no middle course
open to us. The physiologists have made it absolutely plain that the brain is
concerned with thinking. Nay more, that thought may go on without any
volition on the part of the thinker. Further, that much of our best work in art
and literature is the result of what is called unconscious cerebration. Now,
we must admit one of two things. Either thought is a process of the material
brain, one more “mode of motion,” as the materialists contend, or the
material brain is the agent of the spiritual thought, which acts upon it, let us
say, as the fingers of a player upon the keys of his instrument. Grant this
and the whole question is conceded. The impact of the spiritual upon the
material is an accepted fact.
As we have had occasion to say before, in this great work of education
parents and teachers are permitted to play only a subordinate part after all.

You may bring your horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink; and
you may present ideas of the fittest to the mind of the child; but you do not
know in the least which he will take, and which he will reject. And very
well for us it is that this safeguard to his individuality is implanted in every
child’s breast. Our part is to see that his educational plat is constantly
replenished with fit and inspiring ideas, and then we must needs leave it to
the child’s own appetite to take which he will have, and as much as he
requires. Of one thing we must beware. The least symptom of satiety,
especially when the ideas we present are moral and religious, should be
taken as a serious warning. Persistence on our part just then may end in the
child’s never willingly sitting down to that dish any more.
The very limitations we see to our own powers in this matter of
presenting ideas should make us the more anxiously careful as to the nature
of the ideas set before our children. We shall not be content that they learn
geography, history, Latin, what not,—we shall ask what salient ideas are
presented in each such study, and how will these ideas affect the intellectual
and moral development of the child. We shall be in a mood, that is, to go
calmly and earnestly into the question of education as presented by M.
Fouillée. We shall probably differ from him in many matters of detail, but
we shall most likely be inclined to agree with his conclusion that, not some
subject of mere utility, but moral and social science conveyed by means of
history, literature, or otherwise, is the one subject which we are not at
liberty to leave out from the curriculum of “a being breathing thoughtful
breath.”
The tables of studies given in the appendix are of extreme value. Every
subject is treated from what may be called the ideal point of view.
“Two things are necessary. First, we must introduce into the study of
each science the philosophic spirit and method, general views, the search
for the most general principles and conclusions. We must then reduce the
different sciences to unity by a sound training in philosophy, which will be
as obligatory to students in science as to students in literature.... Scientific
truths, said Descartes, are battles won; describe to the young the principal
and most heroic of these battles; you will thus interest them in the results of
science, and you will develop in them a scientific spirit by means of the
enthusiasm for the conquest of truth; you will make them see the power of
the reasoning which has led to discoveries in the past, and which will do so

again in the future. How interesting arithmetic and geometry might be if we
gave a short history of their principal theorems; if the child were mentally
present at the labours of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a Euclid, or in modern times
of a Viète, a Descartes, a Pascal, or a Leibnitz. Great theories, instead of
being lifeless and anonymous abstractions, would become human, living
truths, each with its own history, like a statue by Michael Angelo, or like a
painting by Raphael.”

FOOTNOTES:
[10] “Education from a National Standpoint.”

CHAPTER XIII

FAITH AND DUTY

III

There is a little involuntary resistance in our minds to any teaching which
shall draw the deep things of our faith within the sphere of the laws which
govern our development as human beings. We prefer that the commerce
between God and the soul, in which is our life, should be altogether
“supernatural,” apart from the common laws of life, arbitrary, inexplicable,
opposed to reason. If we err in this, it is in reverence we err. Our thought
may be poor and crude, but all our desire is to hallow the Divine Name, and
we know no other way in which to set it apart. But though we err in
reverence, we do err, and, in the spiritual, as in the natural world, the motive
does not atone for the act. We lose through this misconception of our
relations with God the sense of unity in our lives. We become aware of an
altogether unnatural and irreligious classification into things sacred and
things secular. We are not in all things at one with God. There are beautiful
lives in which there is no trace of this separation, whose aims are confined
to the things we call sacred. But many thoughtful earnest persons feel sorely
the need of a conception of the divine relation which shall embrace the
whole of human life, which shall make art, science, politics, all those cares
and thoughts of men which are not rebellious, sacred also, as being all
engaged in the great evolution, the evolution of the Kingdom of God.
Our religious thought, as our educational thought, is, far more than we
imagine, the outcome of our philosophy. And do not let us imagine that
philosophy is not for the general run of men, but only for the few. On the
contrary, there is no living soul who does not develop his own philosophy
of life—that which he appropriates of the current thoughts of his time,
modified by his own experiences.

It would be interesting to trace the effect upon religious thought of the
two great schools of philosophy—the Idealistic and the Naturalistic; but
that is beyond our powers, and beyond our purpose here; we must confine
ourselves to what is immediately practical. The present day crux is, that
naturalistic philosophy being in the ascendant, and the things of our religion
being altogether idealistic, many noble natures are in revolt, feeling that
they cannot honestly accept as truth that which is opposed to human reason.
Others, to whom their religious faith is the first thing, but who are yet in
touch with the thought and discovery of the day, affect an only half-honest
compromise with themselves, and say that there are certain questions which
they will not examine; matters secular alone being open to searching
scrutiny. Now, it is not, as we so often hear, that the times are out of joint,
that Christianity is effete, that there is any inherent antagonism between the
facts of natural and the facts of spiritual life. It is our own philosophy which
needs to be adjusted. We have somehow managed to get life out of focus;
we have begun with false initial ideas, and have taken the logical inferences
from these for essential truth. We have not perceived that the concern of the
reasoning powers is not with moral or spiritual truth, or even with what we
call facts, but is simply with the logical inferences from any premisses
whatever accepted by the mind.
In our examination of M. Fouillée’s Education from a National
Standpoint, we made some attempt to show that the two schemes of
philosophy which have hitherto divided the world have done so because
both are right, and neither is exclusively right. Matter and spirit, force and
idea, work together in the evolution of character. The brain, somehow,
makes material record of those ideas which inspire the life. But the brain
does not originate those ideas. They are spiritual in their nature, and are
spiritually conveyed, whether by means of the printed page, the glance of
an eye, the touch of a hand, or in that holy mystery of the inbreathing of the
Divine Spirit, of which we cannot tell whence it comes nor whither it goes.
Once we recognise that all thoughts that breathe and words that burn are of
their nature spiritual, and appeal to the spiritual within us—that, in fact, all
intercourse of thought and feeling belongs to the realm of ideas, spiritually
conveyed, the great mysteries of our religion cease to be hedged off from
our common experiences. If the friend who sits beside us deals with us,
spirit with spirit, by means of quick interchange of ideas, is it hard to
believe that just so is the intercourse between the Spirit of God and the

spirit of man? The more perfect the sympathy between human souls, the
less the need for spoken words. How easy to go on from this to the thought
of that most intimate and blissful of all intercourse, the converse between
the devout soul and its God. Nothing can be more obvious, real, natural,
necessary, than that the Father of Spirits should graciously keep open such
intimate access to, and converse with, the spirits of men.

“I would that one would grant me,
O my Lord,
To find Thee only.
* * * * *
That Thou alone wouldst speak to me, and I to Thee,
As a lover talking to his loved one,
A friend at table with his friend,”[11]

is ever the aspiration of the devout soul. This continuous aspiration towards
closest communion is, spoken or unspoken, the prayer of faith. A vain and
fond imagination, says the sceptic, begotten of the heart, as when Narcissus
became enamoured of his reflected image! What have we to say in reply?
Nothing. He who does not perceive that he loves in his brother not the
material form, but the spiritual being of which this form is one expression,
how can he understand that the Spirit of God should draw with irresistible
drawings the spirit of man, which is indeed the whole man. For, after all,
what is the body but the garment which the spirit shapes to its uses?
To accept the outward seeming, to ignore the spiritual reality, is the
easier way. To say that prayer is flung, as a child flings his kite, into the air,
only to come down again; to say that men are the creatures of
circumstances, with no power to determine their own fate; that this belief
and that are equal verities, and that the worship of Christ or of Buddha is a
mere affair of climate and conditions; this easy tolerance commends itself
to many minds in these days.
“And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man?... To what, we
say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to shameful loneliness and
selfishness, the more shameful because it is so good-humoured and
conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept
remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike, enveloped in
enormous tradition. If, seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world,

Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to
them without any protest further than a laugh; if, plunged yourself in easy
sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to go past groaning by you
unmoved; if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are
on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on
your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had
better have died, or never have been at all, than be such a sensual
coward.”[12]
Mr. Beeching’s Eleven Sermons on Faith are in refreshing contrast with
this sort of modern Saduceeism. In his view, faith is not mystic,
supernatural, an exceptional development; it is the common basis of our
dealings with each other. Credit, trust, confidence—the framework of
society rests upon these. “I cannot trust you”—what worse thing can we say
to one another? The law recognises every man’s right to the confidence of
his fellow-men, and will have a man accounted innocent until he is proved
guilty. Our whole commercial and banking systems, what are they, but
enormous systems of credit, and only one in a hundred, or one in a
thousand, fails to sustain this credit. Family and social life rest upon credit
of another sort; let us call it moral credit, and only one in a hundred or one
in a thousand forfeits the trust. If one here and there give occasion for
jealousy, mistrust, suspicion, why, the exception proves the rule. In his
dealings with men, man lives by credit; in his dealings with God, man lives
by faith. Let us use the same word in both cases, and say that man is a
spiritual being, and, in all his relations, Godward or manward, he lives by
faith. How simple and easy a thing faith becomes! How especially easy to
the children who trust everybody and offer a confiding hand to any guide.
Could we only rid ourselves of the materialistic notion that spiritual things
are not to be understood by us, and that to believe in God is altogether a
different thing from to trust a friend, how easy we should find the questions
which we allow to stagger our faith.
But the Kingdom of God is coming upon us with power. Let us only
break down this foolish barrier of the flesh; let us perceive that our relations
with each other are the relations of spirit with spirit, and that spoken and
written words are no more than the outward and visible signs of ideas
spiritually conveyed, and how inevitable, incessant, all-encompassing
becomes the presence of God about us. Faith is, then, the simple trust of

person in Person. We realise with fearful joy that He is about our path, and
about our bed, and spieth out all our ways—not with the austere eye of a
judge, but with the caressing, if critical, glance of a parent. How easy, then,
to understand the never-ceasing, ever-inspiring intercourse of the Divine
Spirit with the spirit of man—how, morning by morning, He awakeneth our
ear, also; how His inspiration and instruction come in the direction, and in
the degree, in which the man is capable of receiving them. It is no longer a
puzzle to us that the uninstructed savage shows sweet traits of pity and
generosity, “for His God doth instruct him and doth teach him.” We are not
confounded when we hear of a righteous man who lifts up his face to
Heaven, and says, “There is no God,” because we know, He maketh His sun
to shine upon the evil and upon the good, and that just that measure of
moral light and leading which a man lays himself open to receive is freely
given to him. He may shut his eyes and say, “There is no sun,” but none the
less is he warmed and fed and comforted by the light he denies. This is the
faith in which we would bring up our children, this strong, passionate sense
of the dear nearness of our God; found in this conviction, the controversies
of the day will interest but not exercise us, for we are on the other side of all
doubt once we know Him in whom we have believed.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. We advance in
this lore of the soul only in proportion as we make it our study; and all of us
who have the bringing up of children must needs be thankful for every word
of help and insight which shall open our eyes to the realities which are
spiritually discerned. In this view parents will be glad to read and ponder
the Sermons before us. Profound thought is conveyed in language of very
great simplicity and purity. The sermons are written from the standpoint of
present day thought, are not at all emotional, nor even hortatory, but they
are very strengthening and refreshing. You read, and go on your way
rejoicing in a strong sense of the reality of things unseen. Perhaps this result
is due to Mr. Beeching’s presentation of the naturalness of faith.
“It is noticeable that while our Lord is always demanding Faith, He
offers no definition of the Faith He requires; so that there is a presumption
that He meant by Faith just what men ordinarily mean by it. And the
presumption is increased when it is remembered that Faith in our Lord
began with being faith in human qualities before those qualities were seen
to be divine. The faith of the Apostles increased under our Lord’s careful

training, both in depth and breadth; but between the first attraction that
drew (say) Peter from his nets, and the last declaration of his worship upon
the shores of Gennesaret, there was no breach of continuity. Indeed, as if to
assure us that the Apostle’s human faith had not after the Resurrection
‘changed to something else,’ and become an indefinite theological virtue,
we find the word used to express it which, of all the words which labour to
express faith, is the one most deeply tinged with human feeling: ‘Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?’ We must ask, therefore,
what, as between man and man, is commonly meant by Faith, and then we
can examine whether our explanation fits the several groups of passages in
the Gospels.”
The above extract from the very thoughtful and instructive Preface
illustrates what we mean by the naturalness of faith, not that which comes
of itself and by itself, but that which is acceptable, fit, and proper to our
nature whenever and whencesoever it arrive. “For,” as Mr. Beeching says,
“as faith is itself no self-originated impulse, but the springing up of a man’s
heart in response to the encircling pressure of the ‘Everlasting Arms,’ so its
reward is to feel more deeply and ever more deeply their divine support.”
The eleven sermons are upon “The Object of Faith,” “The Worship of
Faith,” “The Righteousness of Faith,” “The Food of Faith,” “National
Faith,” “The Eye of Faith,” “The Ear of Faith,” “The Activity of Faith,”
“The Gentleness of Faith,” “The Discipline of Faith,” “Faith in Man.”
In his examination of “The Object of Faith,” Mr. Beeching asks: “What
then is He like; what kind of countenance is it that shines out upon us from
the Gospel pages? Let us turn to them and see.” And we read the story of
how Jesus, being moved with compassion, touched the eyes of the two
blind men by the wayside going out from Jericho. How Christ had
compassion on other things besides bodily sickness. “Christ has compassion
also on ignorance; on the aimless wandering of men after their own desires,
without a Master to follow; on the weariness of spirit that such a life brings
about.” Again, “Christ has compassion not only on sickness and ignorance,
but on sin—on the sinner who repents.” And we read the story of the
woman whose sins, which were many, were forgiven, for she loved much.
Again, we see the countenance of Christ as it is turned upon that young
man, of whom it is said, “Then Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.”
“Compassion, then, for suffering and ignorance, and sin that repents, love

for enthusiasm, this we have seen in the face of Christ.” One more divine
regard we are invited to contemplate; how the Lord turned and looked upon
Peter. “Can you imagine with what a face our Lord looked upon Peter, who
had thrice denied Him, after confidently affirming that he would go with
Him to death? Would that that face would shine upon us with whatever
reproach when we in word or deed deny Him, that so we too may remember
and weep.” How the heart rises to such teaching as this—the simple
presentation of Christ as He walked among men. Well did our Lord say: “I,
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” The pity of it is that He, the
altogether lovely, is so seldom lifted up to our adoring gaze. Perhaps, when
our teachers invite us to behold the face of Christ, we shall learn the full
interpretation of that profound word. He will draw all men, because it is not
possible for any human soul to resist the divine loveliness once it is fairly
and fully presented to his vision.
The sermon on the “Worship of Faith,” sets forth that “to worship Christ
is to bow down with love and wonder and thankfulness, before the most
perfect goodness that the world has ever seen, and to believe that that
goodness was the express image of God the Father.” All aims and all ideals,
that are not the aims and ideals of Christ, are distinctly opposed to such
worship, and the man who entertains these alien ideals may not call himself
a Christian. After examining that attitude of the spirit towards Christ which
belongs to the worship of faith, the rest of the sermon is very practical.
“Work is Worship,” is the keynote: one longs that a writer who knows so
well how to touch the secret springs had taken this opportunity to move us
to that “heart’s adoration,” which is dearer to God; but, indeed, the whole
volume has this tendency. It is well to be reminded that “the thorough and
willing performance of any duty, however humble or however exalted, is
like the offering of incense to Christ, well-pleasing and acceptable.”
The sermon on the “Righteousness of Faith,” is extremely important and
instructive. The writer dwells on the “deplorable cant” with which we
pronounce ourselves “miserable sinners,” combining the “sentiments of the
Pharisees in the parable with the expressions of the publican.”
“Christ’s language about man’s sinfulness is altogether free from
vagueness and hyperbole; when He blames He blames for definite faults
which we can appreciate, and He is so far from declaring that men can do
no good thing, that He assumes always that man in his proper state of

dependence upon God has the power to do righteousness. ‘Whosoever shall
do the will of My Father, which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and
sister, and mother.’... But the question remains, How, considering our actual
shortcomings, can any of us be spoken of by Christ as righteous here and
now? This is the question in answer to which St. Paul wrote two of his
greatest Epistles. His answer was, that according to Christ, a man is
accounted righteous, not from a consideration of his works, but from a
consideration of his faith in God. Human righteousness is not a verdict upon
the summing up of a life, but it is reckoned to a man at any moment from a
certain disposition of his spirit to the Spirit of God; a disposition of trust,
love, reverence, the disposition of a dutiful son to a good father....
Righteousness, in the only sense in which it is possible for men, means
believing and trusting God.”
We have not space to take up in detail all the teaching of this inspiring
little volume. We commend it to parents. Who, as they, have need to nourish
the spiritual life in themselves? Who, as they, have need to examine
themselves as to with how firm a grasp they hold the mysteries of our faith?
Who, as they, need to have their ideas as to the supreme relationship so
clear that they can be translated into baby speech? Besides, we have seen
that it is the duty of the educator to put the first thing foremost, and all
things in sequence; only one thing is needful—that we “have faith in God”;
let us deliver our thoughts from vagueness and our ways from variableness,
if we would help the children towards this higher life. To this end, we
gladly welcome teaching which is rather nourishing than stimulating, and
which should afford real help towards “sober walking in pure Gospel
ways.”

FOOTNOTES:
[11] “The Imitation of Christ” (Rhythmic translation).
[12] Pendennis. Thackeray.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HEROIC IMPULSE[13]

“To set forth, as only art can, the beauty and the joy of living, the beauty
and the blessedness of death, the glory of battle and adventure, the nobility
of devotion—to a cause, an ideal, a passion even—the dignity of resistance,
the sacred quality of patriotism, that is my ambition here,” says the editor of
“Lyra Heroica” in his preface. We all feel that some such expression of the
“simpler sentiments, more elemental emotions” should be freely used in the
education of children, that, in fact, heroic poetry contains such inspiration
to noble living as is hardly to be found elsewhere; and also we are aware
that it is only in the youth of peoples that these elemental emotions find free
expression in song. We look at our own ballad literature and find plenty of
the right material, but it is too occasional and too little connected, and so
though we would prefer that the children should imbibe patriotism and
heroism at the one fountain head, we think it cannot be done. We have no
truly English material, we say, for education in this kind, and we fall back
on the Homeric myths in one or other of the graceful and spirited renderings
which have been made specially for children.
But what if it should turn out that we have our own Homer, our own
Ulysses? Mr. Stopford Brooke has made a great discovery for us who look
at all things from the child standpoint. Possibly he would not be gratified to
know that his “History of Early English Literature,” invaluable addition as
it is to the library of the student and the man of letters, should be
appropriated as food for babes. All the same, here is what we have long
wanted. The elemental emotions and heroic adventures of the early English
put into verse and tale, strange and eerie as the wildest fairy tale, yet
breathing in every line the English temper and the English virtue that go to
the making of heroes. Not that Beowulf, the hero of the great poem, was
precisely English, but where the English came from, there dwelt he, and

Beowulf was early adopted as the national hero, whose achievements were
sung in every hall.
The poem, says Mr. Stopford Brooke, consisting of three thousand one
hundred and eighty-three lines, is divided into two parts by an interval of
fifty years; the first, containing Beowulf’s great deeds against the monster
Grendel and his dam; the second, Beowulf’s conquest of the Fire-drake and
his death and burial. We are told that we may fairly claim the poem as
English, that it is in our tongue and in our country alone that it is preserved.
The hero Beowulf comes of brave and noble parents, and mildness and
more than mortal daring meet in him. When he comes to Hrothgar to
conquer Grendel it is of his counsel as much as of his strength that we hear.
The queen begs him to be friendly in council to her sons. Hrothgar says to
him, “Thou holdest thy faith with patience and thy might with prudence of
mind. Thou shalt be a comfort to thy people and a help to heroes.” None, it
is said, could order matters more wisely than he. When he is dying he looks
back on his life, and that which he thinks of the most is not his great war
deeds, but his patience, his prudence, his power of holding his own well and
of avoiding new enmities. “Each of us must await the close of life,” says he;
“let him who can, gain honour before he die. That is best for a warrior when
he is dead. But do thou throughout this day have patience of thy woes; I
look for that from thee.” Such the philosophy of this hero, legendary or
otherwise, of some early century after Christ, before His religion had found
its way among those northern tribes. Gentle, like Nelson, he had Nelson’s
iron resolution. What he undertook to do he went through without a
thought, save of getting to the end of it. Fear is wholly unknown to him, and
he seems, like Nelson, to have inspired his captains with his own courage.
“I swore no false oaths,” he said when dying; so also he kept his honour in
faithfulness to his lord. On foot, alone, in front, while life lasted, he was his
king’s defence. He kept it in equal faithfulness when his lord was dead, and
that to his own loss, for when the kingdom was offered to him he refused,
and trained Heardreg, the king’s son, to war and learning, guarded him
kindly with honour, and avenged him when he was slain. He kept it in
generosity, for he gave away all the gifts that he received; in courtesy, for he
gave even to those who had been rude to him; and he is always gentle and
grave with women. Above all, he kept it in war, for these things are said of
him, “so shall a man do when he thinks to gain praise that shall never end,
and cares not for his life in battle.” “Let us have fame or death,” he cries,

and when Wiglaf comes to help him against the dragon, and Beowulf is
wrapped in the flame, Wiglaf recalls to him the aim of his whole life:—
“Beowulf, beloved, bear thyself well. Thou wert wont to say in youth
that thou wouldst never let honour go. Now, strong in deeds, ward thy life,
firm-souled prince, with all thy might, I will be thy helper.” “These,” adds
Mr. Stopford Brooke, “are the qualities of the man and the hero, and I have
thought it worth while to dwell on them, because they represent the ancient
English ideal, the manhood which pleased the English folk even before they
came to Britain, and because in all our histories since Beowulf’s time, for
twelve hundred years or so, they have been repeated in the lives of the
English warriors by land and sea whom we chiefly honour. But it is not only
the idea of a hero which we have in Beowulf, it is also the idea of a king,
the just governor, the wise politician, the builder of peace, the defender of
his own folk at the price of his life, ‘the good king, the folk king, the
beloved king, the war ward of his land, the winner of treasure for the need
of his people, the hero who thinks in death of those who sail the sea, the
gentle and terrible warrior, who is buried amid the tears of his people.’”
We owe Mr. Stopford Brooke earnest gratitude for bringing this heroic
ideal of the youth of our nation within reach of the unlearned. But what
have we been about to let a thousand years and more go by without ever
drawing on the inspiration of this noble ideal in giving impulse to our
children’s lives. We have many English heroes, it may be objected: we have
no need of this resuscitated great one from a long buried past. We have
indeed heroes galore to be proud of, but somehow they have not often been
put into song in such wise as to reach the hearts of the children and the
unlearned. We have to thank Tennyson for our Arthur, and Shakespeare for
our Henry the Fifth, but we imagine that parents will find their children’s
souls more in touch with Beowulf than with either of these, because, no
doubt, the legends of a nation’s youth are the pages of history which most
easily reach a child, and Beowulf belongs to a younger stage of civilisation
than even Arthur. We hope the author of “Early English Literature” will
sometime give us the whole of the poem translated with a special view to
children, and interspersed with his own luminous teaching as we have it
here. The quaintness of the metre employed gives a feeling of eld which
carries the reader back, very successfully, to the long ago of the poem.

We have already quoted largely from this “History of Early English
Literature,” but perhaps a fuller extract will give a better idea of the work
and of its real helpfulness to parents. The cost of the two rather expensive
volumes should be well repaid if a single child were to be fired with
emulation of the heroic qualities therein sung:—
“The action of the poem now begins with the voyage of Beowulf to the
Danish coast. The hero has heard that Hrothgar, the chief of the Danes, is
tormented by Grendel, a man-devouring monster. If Hrothgar’s warriors
sleep in Heorot—the great hall he has built—they are seized, torn to pieces,
and devoured. ‘I will deliver the king,’ thought Beowulf, when he heard the
tale from the roving seamen. ‘Over the swan road I will seek Hrothgar; he
has need of men.’ His comrades urged him to the adventure, and fifteen of
them were willing to fight it out with him. Among the rest was a sea-crafty
man who knew the ocean-paths. Their ship lay drawn up on the beach,
under the high cliff. Then—
“There the well-geared heroes
Stepped upon the stem, while the stream of ocean
Whirled the sea against the sand. To the ship, to its breast.
Bright and carved things of cost carried then the heroes
And the armour well-arrayed. So the men outpushed,
On desired adventure, their tight ocean wood.
Swiftly went above the waves, with a wind well-fitted,
Likest to a fowl, the Floater, foam around its neck,
Till about the same time, on the second day,
The up-curvéd prow had come on so far,
That at last the seamen saw the land ahead;
Shining sea-cliffs, soaring headlands,
Broad sea-nesses. So the Sailor of the Sea
Reached the sea-way’s end.”
Beowulf l. 211.

“This was the voyage, ending in a fiord with two high sea-capes at its
entrance. The same kind of scenery belongs to the land whence they had set
out. When Beowulf returns over the sea the boat groans as it is pushed
forth. It is heavily laden; the hollow, under the single mast with the single
sail, holds eight horses, swords and treasure and rich armours. The sail is
hoisted, the wind drives the foam-throated bark over the waves, until they
see the Geats’ Cliffs—the well-known sea-nesses. The keel is pressed up by
the wind on the sand, and the ‘harbour-guard, who had looked forth afar
o’er the sea with longing for their return’—one of the many human touches

of the poem—‘fastens the wide-bosomed ship with anchoring chains to the
strand, lest the violence of the waves should sweep away the winsome
boat.’... At the end of the bay into which Beowulf sails is a low shore, on
which he drives his ship, stem on. Planks are pushed out on either side of
the prow; the Weder-folk slipped down on the shore, tied up their sea-wood;
their battle-sarks clanged on them as they moved. Then they thanked the
gods that the war-paths had been easy to them.... On the ridge of the hill
above the landing-place the ward of the coast of the Scyldings sat on his
horse, and saw the strangers bear their bright shields over the bulwarks of
the ship to the shore. He rode down, wondering, to the sea, and shook
mightily in his hands his heavy spear, and called to the men—”
“Who are ye of men, having arms in hand,
Covered with your coats of mail. Who your keel afoaming
O’er the ocean street thus have urged along.
Hither on the high sea!”
* * * * *
“Never saw I greater
Earl upon this earth than is one of you;
Hero in his harness. He is no home-stayer,
‘Less his looks belie him, lovely with his weapons.
Noble is his air!”
Beowulf, ll. 237-247.

“Beowulf replies that he is Hrothgar’s friend, and comes to free him
from ‘Grendel, the secret foe on the dark nights.’ He pities Hrothgar, old
and good. Yet, as he speaks, the Teutonic sense of the inevitable Wyrd
passes by in his mind, and he knows not if Hrothgar can ever escape
sorrow. ‘If ever,’ he says, ‘sorrow should cease from him, release ever
come, and the welter of care become cooler.’ The coast-guard shows them
the path, and promises to watch over their ship. The ground rises from the
shore, and they pass on to the hilly ridge, behind which lies Heorot.”
“The History of the Early English Literature” takes us into other pleasant
places. Here are two or three specimens of the riddles of the old bards, and
in riddle and saga we get most vivid pictures of the life and thoughts, the
ways and words of the forefathers whom we are too ready to think of as
‘rude,’ but who are here portrayed to us as gentle, mild, and large of soul;
men and women whom we, their posterity, may well delight to honour.

I. Here is Cynewulf’s Riddle of the Sword.
“I’m a wondrous wight for warstrife shapen;
By my lord beloved, lovelily adorned:
Many coloured is my corslet, and a clasping wire
Glitters round the gem of death which my wielder gave to me:
He who whiles doth urge me, wide-wanderer that I am,
With him to conquest.
Then I carry treasure,
Cold above the garths, through the glittering day;
I of smiths the handiwork! Often do I quell
Breathing men with battle edges! Me bedecks a king
With his hoard and silver; honours me in hall,
Doth withhold no word of praise! Of my ways he boasts
‘Fore the many heroes, where the mead they drink.
In restraint he lulls me, then he lets me loose again,
Far and wide to rush along; me the weary with wayfarings,
Cursed of all weapons.”
Riddle xxi.

II. The helmet speaks:—
“Wretchedness I bear;
Wheresoe’er he carries me, he who clasps the spear!
On me, still upstanding, smite the streams (of rain);
Hail, the hard grain (helms me), and the hoar-frost covers me;
And the (flying) snow (in flakes) falls all over me.”
Riddle, lxxix. 6-10.

III. The horn speaks:—
“I a weaponed warrior was! now in pride bedecks me
A young serving man all with silver and fine gold,
With the work of waving gyres! Warriors sometimes kiss me.
Sometimes I to strife of battle, summon with my calling
Willing war-companions; whiles, the horse doth carry
Me the march-paths over, or the ocean-stallion
Fares the flood with me, flashing in my jewels—
Often times a bower maiden, all bedecked with armlets,
Filleth up my bosom; whiles, bereft of covers,
I must, hard and headless, (in the houses) lie!
Then, again, hang I, with adornments fretted,
Winsome on the wall where the warriors drink.
Sometimes the folk fighters, as a fair thing on warfaring,
On the back of horses bear me; then bedecked with jewels
Shall I puff with wind from a warrior’s breast.

Then, again, to glee feasts I the guests invite
Haughty heroes to the wine— other whiles shall I
With my shouting, save from foes what is stolen away,
Make the plundering scather flee. Ask what is my name!”
Riddle xv.

We do not say a word about the literary value and importance of Mr.
Stopford Brooke’s great work; that is duly appraised elsewhere. ‘There is
nothing like leather,’ and to us here all things present themselves as they
may tell on education. Here is a very treasure-trove.

FOOTNOTES:
[13] “History of Early English Literature,” by Stopford A. Brooke, 2
vols. Macmillan & Co.

CHAPTER XV

IS IT POSSIBLE?

The economic aspects of the great philanthropic scheme[14] which brought
timely relief to the national conscience before the setting in of the hard
winter of 1891, are, perhaps, outside our province, but there are educational
aspects of it which, we are in some measure, bound to discuss. In the first
place, the children in many homes hear, “I do not believe that”—it is
possible for the leopard to change his spots. ‘General’ Booth’s scheme
brings this issue before us with startling directness, and what the children
hear said to-day at the table and by the fireside will probably influence for
all their lives their attitude towards all philanthropic and all missionary
endeavour. Not only so, but we ourselves, who stand in some measure in
loco parentis to the distressed in mind, body, or estate, are compelled to
examine our own position. How far do we give, and work, for the ease of
our own conscience, and how far do we believe in the possibility of the
instant and utter restoration of the morally degraded, are questions which,
to-day, force themselves upon us. We must be ready with a yea or a nay; we
must take sides, for or against such possibilities as should exalt
philanthropic effort into a burning passion. The fact is, this great scheme
forced a sort of moral crisis upon us.
Whether or no the scheme commends itself to us for its fitness,
seasonableness, and promise, one thing it has assuredly done: it has
revealed us to ourselves, and that in an agreeable light. It has been
discovered to us that we, too, love our brother; that we, too, yearn over “the
bruised” with something of the tenderness of Christ. The brotherhood of
man is no fancy bred in the brain, and we have loved our brother all the
time—the sick, the poor, the captive, and the sinner, too; but the fearful, and
unbelieving, and slothful amongst us—that is, the most of us—have turned
away our eyes from beholding evils for which we saw no help. But now that

a promise of deliverance offers, more adequate, conceivably, than any
heretofore proposed, why, the solidarity of humanity asserts itself; our
brother who is bruised is not merely near and dear; he is our very self, and
whoso will ease and revive him is our deliverer too.
The first flush of enthusiasm subsides, and we ask, Are we not, after all,
led away by what Coleridge calls the “Idol of Size”? Wherein does this
scheme differ from ten thousand others, except in the colossal scale on
which the experiment is to be tried? And perhaps we should concede at the
outset that this hope of deliverance is “the same, only more so,” as is being
already worked out effectually in many an otherwise sunless corner of the
great vineyard. Indeed, the great project has its great risks—risks which the
quieter work escapes. All the same, there are aspects in which the remedy,
because of its vastness and inclusiveness, is new.
Hitherto we have helped the wretched in impossible circumstances, not
out of them. Our help has been as a drop in the bucket, reaching to hundreds
or thousands only of the lost millions. Even so, we cannot keep it up; we
give to-day, and withhold to-morrow; worse than all, our very giving is an
injury, reducing the power and the inclination for self-help. Or, do we start
some small amateur industry by way of making our people independent?
This pet industry may sometimes be a transparent mask for almsgiving, and
an encroachment upon regular industries and the rights of other workers.
Now and then is a gleam of hope, now and then a soul and body
snatched into safety; but the hardest workers are glad of the noise of the
wheels to keep the eternal Cui bono? out of their ears. There is so much to
be done, and so little means of doing it. But this scheme—what with the
amplitude of its provisions, what with the organisation and regimentation it
promises, the strong and righteous government, the moral compulsion to
well-doing—considering these, and the enormous staff of workers already
prepared to carry it out, the dreariest pessimist amongst us concedes that
General Booth’s scheme may be worth trying. “But,” he says, “but——

do we believe in conversion?”

Everything turns on the condition the originator wisely puts first. There
is the crux. Given money enough, land enough, men enough, fully equip
and officer this teeming horde of incapables, and some sort of mechanical

drill may be got through somehow. But, “when a man’s own character and
defects constitute the reasons for his fall, that character must be changed
and that conduct altered if any permanent beneficial results are to be
obtained.” The drunkard must be made sober; the criminal, honest; the
impure, clean. Can this be done? is the crucial question. Is it possible that a
man can emerge altogether out of his old self and become a new creature,
with new aims, new thoughts, even new habits? That such renovation is
possible is the old contention of Christianity. Here, and not on the ground of
the inspiration of the sacred text, must the battle be fought out. The answer
to the one urgent question of the age, What think ye of Christ? depends
upon the power of the idea of Christ to attract and compel attention, and of
the indwelling of Christ to vivify and elevate a single debased and torpid
human soul.
Many of us believe exultingly that the “All power” which is given into
the hands of our Master includes the power of upright standing, strength,
and beauty for every bruised human reed. That this is so, we have evidence
in plenty, beginning with ourselves. But many others of us, and those not
the less noble, consider with Robert Elsmere, that “miracles do not
happen.” The recorded miracles serve as pegs for the discussion; the
essential miracle is the utter and immediate renovation of a human being.
Upon this possibility the saving of the world must hang, and this many
cannot receive, not because they are stiff-necked and perverse, but because
it is dead against natural law as they know it. Proofs? Cases without end?
The whole history of the Christian Church in evidence? Yes; but the history
of the Church is a chequered one; and, for individual cases, we do not doubt
the veracity of the details; only, nobody knows the whole truth; some
preparation in the past, some motive in the present inadvertently kept out of
sight, may alter the bearings of any such case.
This is, roughly, the position of the honest sceptic, who would, if he
could, believe heartily in General Booth’s scheme, and, by consequence, in
the convertibility of the entire human race. To improve the circumstances,
even of millions, is only a question of the magnitude of the measures taken,
the wisdom of the administration. But human nature itself, depraved human
nature, is, to him, the impossible quantity. Can the leopard change his
spots?

the law against us—heredity.

Who are they whom General Booth cheerfully undertakes to re-fashion
and make amenable to the conditions of godly and righteous and sober
living? Let us hear the life history of many of them in his own words:—
“The rakings of the human cesspool.”
“Little ones, whose parents are habitually drunk.... Whose ideas of
merriment are gained from the familiar spectacle of the nightly debauch.”
“The obscenity of the talk of many of the children of some of our public
schools could hardly be outdone, even in Sodom and Gomorrah.”
And the childhood—save the word!—of the children of to-day
reproduces the childhood of their parents, their grand-parents, who knows?
their great-grand-parents. These are, no doubt, the worst; but the worst must
be reckoned with first, for if these slip through the meshes of the remedial
net, the masses more inert than vicious slide out through the breaks. In the
first place, then, the scheme embraces the vicious by inheritance; proposes
to mix up with the rest a class whose sole heritage is an inconceivable and
incalculable accumulation of vicious inclinations and propensities. And this,
in the face of that conception of heredity which is quietly taking possession
of the public mind, and causing many thoughtful parents to abstain from
very active efforts to mould the characters of their children.
Those of us whose attention has been fixed upon the working of the law
of heredity until it appears to us to run its course, unmodified and unlimited
by other laws, may well be pardoned for regarding with doubtful eye a
scheme which has, for its very first condition, the regeneration of the
vicious; of the vicious by inherited propensity.

the law against us—habit.

Use is second nature, we say. Habit is ten natures; habit begins as a
cobweb, and ends as a cable. “Oh, you’ll get used to it,” whatever it is. Dare
we face the habits in which these people have their being? It is not only the
obscene speech, the unholy acts; that which signifies is the manner of
thoughts we think; speech, act, are the mere outcome; it is the habitual
thought of a man which shapes that which we call his character. And these,

can we reasonably doubt that every imagination of their heart is only evil
continually? We say, use is second nature, but let us consider what we mean
by the phrase; what is the philosophy of habit so far as it has been
discovered to us. The seat of habit is the brain; the actual grey nervous
matter of the cerebrum. And the history of a habit is shortly this: “The
cerebrum of man grows to those modes of thought in which it is habitually
exercised.” That ‘immaterial’ thought should mould the ‘material’ brain
need not surprise nor scandalise us, for do we not see with our eyes that
immaterial thought moulds the face, forms what we call countenance,
lovely or loathsome according to the manner of thought it registers. The
how of this brain growth is not yet in evidence, nor is this the time and
place to discuss it; but, bearing in mind this structural adaptation to
confirmed habit, what chance, again, we say, has a scheme which has for its
first condition the regeneration of the vicious, vicious not only by inherited
propensity, but by unbroken inveterate habit?

the law against us—unconscious cerebration.

Those who are accustomed to write know what it is to sit down and “reel
off” sheet after sheet of matter without plan or premeditation, clear,
coherent, ready for press, hardly needing revision. We are told of a lawyer
who wrote in his sleep a lucid opinion throwing light on a most difficult
case; of a mathematician who worked out in his sleep a computation which
baffled him when awake. We know that Coleridge dreamed “Kubla Khan”
in an after-dinner nap, line by line, and wrote it down when he awoke. What
do these cases and a thousand like them point to? To no less than this: that,
though the all important ego must, no doubt, “assist” at the thinking of the
initial thought on a given subject, yet, after that first thought or two, ‘brain’
and ‘mind’ manage the matter between them, and the thoughts, so to speak,
think themselves; not after the fashion of a pendulum which moves to and
fro, to and fro, in the same interval of space, but in that of a carriage rolling
along the same road, but into ever new developments of the landscape. An
amazing thought—but have we not abundant internal evidence of the fact?
We all know that there are times when we cannot get rid of the thoughts that
will think themselves within us, though they drive away sleep and peace and
joy. In the face of this law, benign as it eases us of the labour of original
thought and decision about the everyday affairs of life, terrible when it gets

beyond our power of control and diversion, what hope for those in whose
debauched brain vile thoughts, involuntary, automatic, are for ever running
with frightful rapidity in the one well-worn track? Truly, the in-look is
appalling. What hope for these? And what of a scheme whose first
condition is the regeneration of the vicious—vicious, not only by inherited
propensity, and by unbroken inveterate habit, but reduced to that state of,
shall we say, inevitable viciousness—when “unconscious cerebration,” with
untiring activity, goes to the emanation of vicious imaginations? All these
things are against us.

the law for us—limitations to the doctrine of heredity.

But the last word of Science, and she has more and better words in store,
is full of hope. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, but it is not inevitable
that the children’s teeth be set on edge. The soul that sinneth it shall die,
said the prophet of old, and Science is hurrying up with her, “Even so.” The
necessary corollary to the latest modification of the theory of evolution is—
acquired modifications of structure are not transmitted. All hail to the good
news; to realise it, is like waking up from a hideous nightmare. This is,
definitely, our gain; the man who by the continuous thinking of criminal
thoughts has modified the structure of his brain so as to adapt it to the
current of such thoughts, does not necessarily pass on this modification to
his child. There is no necessary adaptation in the cerebrum of the new-born
child to make place for evil thoughts. In a word, the child of the vicious
may be born as fit and able for good living as the child of the righteous.
Inherent modifications are, it is true, transmitted, and the line between
inherent and acquired modifications may not be easy to define. But,
anyway, there is hope to go on with. The child of the wicked may have as
good a start in life, so far as his birthright goes, as the child of the just. The
child’s future depends not upon his lineage so much as upon his bringing
up, for education is stronger than nature, and no human being need be given
over to despair. We need not abate our hope of the regeneration of the
vicious for the bugbear of an inheritance of irresistible propensity to evil.

the law for us—“one custom overcometh another.”

But habit! It is bad enough to know that use is second nature, and that
man is a bundle of habits; but how much more hopeless to look into the
rationale of habit, and perceive that the enormous strength of the habit that
binds us connotes a structural modification, a shaping of the brain tissues to
the thought of which the habit is the outward and visible sign and
expression. Once such growth has taken place, is not the thing done, so that
it can’t be undone—has not the man taken shape for life when his ways of
thinking are registered in the substance of his brain?
Not so; because one habit has been formed and registered in the brain is
no reason at all why another and contrary habit should not be formed and
registered in its turn. To-day is the day of salvation, physically speaking,
because a habit is a thing of now; it may be begun in a moment, formed in a
month, confirmed in three months, become the character, the very man, in a
year. There is growth to the new thoughts in a new tract of the brain, and
“One custom overcometh another.” Here is the natural preparation for
salvation. The words are very old, the words of Thomas à Kempis, but the
perception that they have a literal physical meaning has been reserved for
us to-day. Only one train of ideas can be active at one time; the old cell
connections are broken, and benign nature is busy building up the waste
places, even be they the waste places of many generations. NO ROAD is set
up in the track where the unholy thoughts carried on their busy traffic. New
tissue is formed; the wound is healed, and, save, perhaps, for a scar, some
little tenderness, that place is whole and sound as the rest.
This is how one custom overcometh another: there is no conflict, no
contention, no persuasion. Secure for the new idea a weighty introduction,
and it will accomplish all the rest for itself. It will feed and grow; it will
increase and multiply; it will run its course of its own accord; will issue in
that current of automatic unconscious involuntary thought of the man which
shapes his character. Behold, a new man! Ye must be born again, we are
told; and we say, with a sense of superior knowledge of the laws of nature,
How can a man be born again? Can he enter the second time into his
mother’s womb and be born? This would be a miracle, and we have
satisfied ourselves that “miracles do not happen.” And now, at last, the
miracle of conversion is made plain to our dull understanding. We perceive
that conversion, however sudden, is no miracle at all—using the word
miracle to describe that which takes place in opposition to natural law. On

the contrary, we find that every man carries in his physical substance the
gospel of perpetual, or of always possible, renovation; and we find how,
from the beginning, Nature was prepared with her response to the demand
of Grace. Is conversion possible? we ask; and the answer is, that it is, so to
speak, a function for which there is latent provision in our physical
constitution, to be called forth by the touch of a potent idea. Truly, His
commandment is exceeding broad, and grows broader day by day with each
new revelation of Science.
A man may, most men do, undergo this process of renovation many
times in their lives; whenever an idea strong enough to divert his thoughts
(as we most correctly say) from all that went before is introduced, the man
becomes a new creature; when he is “in love,” for example; when the
fascinations of art or of nature take hold of him; an access of responsibility
may bring about a sudden and complete conversion:—
The breath no sooner left his father’s body
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment,
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him;
Leaving his body as a paradise
To envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Here is a picture—psychologically true, anyway, Shakespeare makes no
mistakes in psychology—of an immediate absolute conversion. The
conversion may be to the worse, alas, and not to the better, and the value of
the conversion must depend upon the intrinsic worthiness of the idea by
whose instrumentality it is brought about. The point worth securing is, that
man carries in his physical structure the conditions of renovation;
conditions, so far as we can conceive, always in working order, always
ready to be put in force. Wherefore “conversion” in the Biblical sense, in
the sense in which the promoters of this scheme depend upon its efficacy,
though a miracle of divine grace in so far as it is a sign and a marvel, is no
miracle in the popular sense of that which is outside of and opposed to the
workings of “natural law.” Conversion is entirely within the divine scheme
of things, even if we choose to limit our vision of that scheme to the “few,
faint, and feeble” flashes which Science is as yet able to throw upon the
mysteries of being. But is this all? Ah, no; this is no more than the dim
vestibule of nature to the temple of grace; we are not concerned, however,

to say one word here of how “great is the mystery of godliness;” of the
cherishing of the Father, the saving and the indwelling of the Son, the
sanctifying of the Spirit; neither need we speak of “spiritual wickedness in
high places.” The aim of this slight essay is to examine the assertion that
what we call conversion is contrary to natural law; and we do this with a
view, not to General Booth’s scheme only, but to all efforts of help.
Hope shows an ever stronger case for the regeneration of the vicious.
Not only need we be no more oppressed by the fear of an inheritance of
invincible propensities to evil, but the strength of life-long habit may be
vanquished by the power of an idea, new habits of thought may be set up on
the instant, and these may be fostered and encouraged until that habit which
is ten natures is the habit of the new life, and the thoughts which, so to
speak, think themselves all day long are thoughts of purity and goodness.

the law for us—potency of an idea.

“Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions?”
In effecting the renovation of a man the external agent is ever an idea, of
such potency as to be seized upon with avidity by the mind, and, therefore,
to make an impression upon the nervous substance of the cerebrum. The
potency of an idea depends upon the fact of its being complementary to
some desire or affection within the man. Man wants knowledge, for
example, and power, and esteem, and love, and company; also, he has
within him capacities for love, esteem, gratitude, reverence, kindness. He
has an unrecognised craving for an object on which to spend the good that
is in him.
The idea which makes a strong appeal to any one of his primal desires
and affections must needs meet with a response. Such idea and such
capacity are made for one another; apart, they are meaningless as ball and
socket; together, they are a joint, effective in a thousand ways. But the man
who is utterly depraved has no capacity for gratitude, for example? Yes, he
has; depravity is a disease, a morbid condition; beneath is the man, capable
of recovery. This is hardly the place to consider them, but think for a
moment of the fitness of the ideas which are summed up in the thought of
Christ to be presented to the poor degraded soul: divine aid and compassion

for his neglected body; divine love for his loneliness; divine forgiveness in
lieu of the shame of his sin; divine esteem for his self-contempt; divine
goodness and beauty to call forth the passion of love and loyalty that is in
him; the Story of the Cross, the lifting up, which perhaps no human soul is
able to resist if it be fitly put. And the divine idea once received, the divine
life is imparted also, grows, is fostered and cherished by the Holy Ghost.
The man is a new creature, with other aims, and other thoughts, and a life
out of himself. The old things have passed away, and all things have
become new—the physical being embodying, so to speak, the new life of
the spirit.
We may well believe, indeed, that “conversion” is so proper to the
physical and spiritual constitution of man that it is inevitable to all of us if
only the ideas summed up in Christ be fitly introduced to the soul.
The question then turns, not upon the possibility of converting the most
depraved, nor upon the potency of the ideas to be presented, but altogether
upon the power of putting these ideas so that a man shall recognise and
seize upon the fulness of Christ as the necessary complement to the
emptiness of which he is aware.

the habits of the good life.

But, the man converted, the work is not done. These sinners exceedingly
are not only sinful, but diseased; morbid conditions of brain have been set
up, and every one of them needs individual treatment, like any other sick
man, for disease slow of cure. For a month, three months, six months, it will
not do to let one of them alone. Curative treatment is an absolute condition
of success, and here is where human co-operation is invited in what is
primarily and ultimately the work of God. There are diseased places in the
brain, where ill thoughts have of old run their course; and these sore places
must have time, blessed time, wherein to heal. That is to say, all traffic in
the old thoughts must be absolutely stopped, at whatever cost.
Think of the Army of Vigilance which must be ever on the alert to turn
away the eyes of the patients from beholding evil; for, a single suggestion,
of drink, of uncleanness, and, presto, the old thoughts run riot, and the work
of healing must be begun anew. And, how to keep out the old, but by
administering the thoughts of the new life watchfully, one by one, as they

are needed, and can be taken; offering them with engaging freshness, with
comforting fitness, until at last the period of anxious nursing is over, the
habits of the good life are set up, and the patient is able to stand on his own
feet and labour for his own meat. This is no work to be undertaken
wholesale. The spiritual care of a multitude diseased, even physically
diseased, of sin, is no light thing. And if it be not undertaken systematically,
and carried out efficiently, the whole scheme must of necessity fall through.
Who is sufficient for these things? No one, perhaps; but a following of a
great corps of nurses trained to minister to minds diseased, and with the
experience and the method belonging to a professional calling, is surely, a
fitting qualification for the Herculean task.

the ease of discipline.

How readily we can understand how, in the days when monarchs were
more despotic than they are now, one and another would take refuge in a
convent for the ease of doing the will of another rather than his own! Is not
this the attraction of conventual life to-day, and is not this why the idea of
the Salvation Army is powerfully attractive to some of us who know, all the
same, that we (individually) should be wrong to lay down our proper
function of ordering and acting out our own lives. But for these, strong of
impulse and weak of will, who have no power at all to do the good they
vaguely and feebly desire, oh, the ease of being taken up into a strong and
beneficent organisation, of having their comings and goings, their doings
and havings, ordered for them! Organisation, regimentation, we are
reminded, make a hero of Tommy Atkins. And these all have it in them to
be heroes, because, restlessness, rebellion, once subdued, they will rejoice
more than any others in the ease of simply doing as they are bidden. Here is
a great secret of power, to treat these, lapsed and restored, like children; for
what is the object of family discipline, of that obedience which has been
described as “the whole duty of a child”? Is it not to ease the way of the
child, while will is weak and conscience immature, by setting it on the
habits of the good life where it is as easy to go right as for a locomotive to
run on its lines? Just such present relief from responsibility, such an interval
for development, do these poor children of larger growth demand for their
needs; and any existing possibility of ordering and disciplining this mixed

multitude must needs appear to us a surpassing adaptation of “supply” to
“demand.”
The saving grace of work, and the healing power of the fresh air, again,
should do their part in the restoration of the “submerged.” But it is not our
part to examine the methods proposed by General Booth, or to adumbrate
his chances of success. Our concern is solely with the children. No doubt
this great social scheme has been discussed, more or less, in every family,
and the attitude of thought towards all good work which the children will
henceforth take may depend very much upon how far the underlying
principles are made clear to them in one such typical instance. Whatever the
agency, let the children be assured that the work is the work of God, to be
accomplished in the strength of God, according to the laws of God; that it is
our part to make ourselves acquainted with the laws we would work out,
and that, having done all, we wait for the inspiration of the divine life, even
as the diligent farmer waits upon sunshine and shower.

FOOTNOTES:
[14] Issue of Darkest England.

CHAPTER XVI

DISCIPLINE

What part does Discipline play in your system of education? We should hail
the query as manifesting a cheering degree of interest if we were not quite
sure that our interlocutor uses discipline as a euphuism for punishment.
That conviction puts one’s mind into the attitude of protest. In the first
place, we have no system of education. We hold that great things, such as
nature, life, education are “cabined, cribbed, confined” in proportion as they
are systematised. We have a method of education, it is true, but method is
no more than a way to an end and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature
herself. Method has a few comprehensive laws according to which details
shape themselves, as one naturally shapes one’s behaviour to the
acknowledged law that fire burns. System, on the contrary, has an infinity
of rules and instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it.
Method in education follows Nature humbly, stands aside and gives her fair
play.
System leads Nature: assists, supplements, rushes in to undertake those
very tasks which Nature has made her own since the world was. Does
Nature endow every young thing, child or kitten, with a wonderful capacity
for inventive play? Nay, but, says System, I can help here; I will invent
games for the child and help his plays, and make more use of this power of
his than unaided Nature knows how. So Dame System teaches the child to
play, and he enjoys it; but, alas, there is no play in him, no initiative, when
he is left to himself; and so on all along the lines. System is fussy and
zealous and produces enormous results—in the teacher! Method pursues a
“wise passiveness.” You watch the teacher and are hardly aware that he is
doing anything. The children take the initiative, but, somehow, the result
here is in these and not in the teacher. They develop, become daily more
and more of persons, with

“The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.”

Such as these are the golden fruits which ripen under the eyes of the parent
who is wise to discriminate between the rôle of nature and that of the
educator, who follows sympathetically and dutifully the lead of the great
mother.
“Oh, then you have no discipline. I thought not. I daresay it would
answer very well to leave children to themselves and make them happy.
Children are always good when they are happy, are they not?” Not so fast,
dear reader. He who would follow a great leader must needs endeavour
himself, Ohne Hast ohne Rast, and the divine lead which we call Nature is
infinitely blessed in the following, but steep to tread and hard to find and by
no means to be confounded with leisurely strolling in ways of our own
devising.
The parent who would educate his children, in any large sense of the
word, must lay himself out for high thinking and lowly living; the highest
thinking indeed possible to the human mind and the simplest, directest
living.
This thought of discipline, for example, is one of the large
comprehensive ideas which must inform and direct the life, rather than be
gathered up into a rule, easy to remember and easy to apply, when, now and
then, comes the occasion for it. If Tommy is naughty, whip him and send
him to bed—is a ready-reckoner kind of rule, handy to have about one, and
is the sort of thing which many people mean by discipline. Now we would
not say that punishment is never to be used, very much otherwise. Neither
would we say that physic is never to be taken. But punishment, like physic,
is a casualty only of occasional occurrence at the worst, and punishment
and physic alike are reduced to a minimum in proportion as we secure
healthy conditions of body and mind. We are not anxious to lay down
canons for punishment. Mr. Herbert Spencer has not perhaps said the last
word, but he has given us a quite convenient rule to go on with. A child
should be punished by the natural consequences of his offence. To carry this
suggestion out au pied de la lettre would often enough mean lasting, even
fatal injury to the child, bodily and mental. You cannot let the indolent child
be punished by ignorance, or the wilful and adventurous child break his
limb; but, so far as punishments have been allowed to become necessary,

the nature of the offence gives one a clue to a suitable punishment. The
child who does not eat his porridge goes without his plum. This is, anyway,
a punishment in kind, perhaps the nearest approach to natural consequences
which it is advisable to try.
But parents should face the fact that children rather enjoy punishments.
In these they find the opportunities, so frequent is story-books, so rare in
real life, for showing a fine pluck. The child who is in punishment is very
commonly enjoying himself immensely, because he is respecting himself
intensely. There is a bit of heroism in the bearing of the penalty which is
very apt to do away with any sense of contrition for the offence, and the
plucky little fellow, who takes his punishment with an air, is by no means a
bad and hardened young offender, but is an economist of opportunities,
making the best of what comes to hand for his own real education. His
mother’s distress, his father’s disapproval, these are quite different matters,
and carry no compensating sense of hardihood. Reflections like these lead
one to spare the rod, not at all out of over sensibility to the child’s physical
suffering, for we would have him endure hardness if we mean to make a
man of him, but purely because it is not easy to find a punishment that does
not defeat its own end.
The light smart slap, with which the mother visits the little child when he
is naughty, is often both effective and educative. It changes the current of
baby’s thoughts, and he no longer wishes to pull his sister’s hair. But should
not the slap be a last resort when no other way is left of changing his
thoughts? With the older child a theory of punishments rests less upon the
necessity to change the culprit’s thoughts than upon the hope of forming a
new association of ideas, that is, of certain pains and penalties inevitably
attached to certain forms of wrong-doing. This, we know too well, is a
teaching of life, and is not to be overlooked in education. The experience of
each of us goes to prove that every breach of law, in thought or deed, is
attended by its own penalties, immediate or remote, and the child who is not
brought up to know that “due follows deed in course,” is sent out to his first
campaign undrilled and untrained, a raw recruit.
Our contention is (a), that the need for punishment is mostly
preventable, and (b), that the fear of punishment is hardly ever so strong a
motive as the delight of the particular wrong-doing in view. If punishment
were necessarily reformative and able to cure us all of those “sins we have a

mind to,” why, the world would be a very good world, for no manner of sin
escapes its present punishment. The fact is, not that punishment is
unnecessary or that it is useless, but that it is inadequate and barely touches
our aim; which is, not the visitation of the offence, but the correction of that
fault of character of which the offence is the outcome. Jemmy tells lies and
we punish him, and by so doing we mark our sense of the offence; but,
probably, no punishment could be invented drastic enough to cure Jemmy
of telling lies in the future, and this is the thing to be aimed at. No, we must
look deeper; we must find out what weak place in character, what false
habit of thinking, leads Jemmy to tell lies, and we must deal with this false
habit in the only possible way, by forming the contrary habit of true
thinking, which will make Jemmy grow up a true man. “I think I have never
told a lie since,” said a lady, describing the single conversation in which her
father cured her of lying by setting up an altogether new train of thought.
Not mere spurts of occasional punishment, but the incessant
watchfulness and endeavour which go to the forming and preserving of the
habits of the good life, is what we mean by discipline, and from this point
of view never were there such disciplinarians as the parents who labour on
the lines we indicate. Every habit of courtesy, consideration, order,
neatness, punctuality, truthfulness, is itself a schoolmaster, and orders life
with the most unfailing diligence.
A habit is so easily formed, so strong to compel. There are few parents
who would not labour diligently if for every month’s labour they were able
to endow one of their children with £1000. But, in a month, a parent may
form a habit in his child of such infinite value that your thousand pounds is
a mere bagatelle by comparison. We have often urged that the great
discovery which modern science has brought to the aid of the educator is,
that every habit of the life sets up, as it were, a material record in the brain
tissues. We all know that we think as we are used to think and act as we are
used to act. Ever since man began to notice the ways of his own mind this
law of habit has been matter of common knowledge, and has been more or
less acted upon by parents and other trainers of children. The well brought-
up child has always been a child carefully trained in good habits. But it is
only within our own day that it has been possible to lay down definite laws
for the formation of habits. Until now, the mother who wished to train her
children in such and such a good habit has found herself hindered by a

certain sense of casualty. “I am sure I am always telling her”—to keep her
drawers neat, or to hold up her head and speak nicely, or to be quick and
careful about an errand,—says the poor mother, with tears in her eyes; and
indeed this, of “always telling” him or her is a weary process for the
mother; dull, because hopeless. She goes on “telling” to deliver her own
soul, for she has long since ceased to expect any result; and we know how
dreary is work without hope. But, perhaps even his mother does not know
how unutterably dreary is this “always telling,” which produces nothing, to
the child. At first he is fretful and impatient under the patter of idle words;
then he puts up with the inevitable, but comes at last hardly to be aware that
the thing is being said. As for any impression on his character, any habit
really formed, all this labour is without result; the child does the thing when
he cannot help it and evades as often as he can. And the poor disappointed
mother says, “I’m sure I’ve tried as much as any mother to train my
children in good habits, but I have failed.” She is not altogether dispirited,
however. The children have not the habits she wished to train them in, but
they grow up warm-hearted, good-natured, bright young people, by no
means children to be ashamed of. All the same, the mother’s sense of failure
is a monition to be trusted. Our failures in life are, perhaps, due, for the
most part, to the defects of our qualities, and, therefore, it is not enough to
send children into the world with just the inheritance of character they get
from their parents.
Let us offer a few definite practical counsels to a parent who wishes to
deal seriously with a bad habit. First.—Let us remember that this bad habit
has made its record in the brain. Second.—There is one way only of
obliterating such record; the absolute cessation of the habit for a
considerable space of time, say, some six or eight weeks. Third.—During
this interval new growth, new cell connections, are somehow or other
taking place, and the physical seat of the evil is undergoing a natural
healing. Fourth.—But the only way to secure this pause is to introduce
some new habit as attractive to the child as is the wrong habit you set
yourself to cure. Fifth.—As the bad habit usually arises from the defect of
some quality in the child it should not be difficult for the parent who knows
his child’s character to introduce the contrary good habit. Sixth.—Take a
moment of happy confidence between parent and child; introduce, by tale
or example, the stimulating idea; get the child’s will with you. Seventh.—
Do not tell him to do the new thing, but quietly and cheerfully see that he

does it on all possible occasions, for weeks if need be, all the time
stimulating the new idea, until it takes great hold of the child’s imagination.
Eighth.—Watch most carefully against any recurrence of the bad habit.
Ninth.—Should the old fault recur, do not condone it. Let the punishment,
chiefly the sense of your estrangement, be acutely felt. Let the child feel the
shame of not only having done wrong, but of having done the wrong when
it was perfectly easy to avoid the wrong and do the right. Above all “watch
unto prayer” and teach your child dependence upon divine aid in this
warfare of the spirit; but also, the absolute necessity for his own efforts.
Susie is an inquisitive little girl. Her mother is surprised and not always
delighted to find that the little maid is constantly on voyages of discovery,
which the servants speak of to each other as prying and poking. Is her
mother engaged in talk with a visitor or the nurse—behold, Susie is at her
side, sprung from nobody knows where. Is a confidential letter being read
aloud—Susie is within earshot. Does the mother think she has put away a
certain book where the children cannot find it—Susie volunteers to produce
it. Does she tell her husband that cook has asked for two days leave of
absence—up jumps Susie, with all the ins and outs of the case. “I really
don’t know what to do with the child. It is difficult to put down one’s foot
and say you ought not to know this or that or the other. Each thing in itself
is harmless enough, but it is a little distressing to have a child who is always
peering about for gossipy information.” Yes, it is tiresome, but is not a case
for despair, nor for thinking hard things of Susie, certainly not for accepting
the inevitable. Regarding this tiresome curiosity as the defect of its quality,
the mother casts about for the quality, and, behold, Susie is reinstated. What
ails the child is an inordinate desire for knowledge, run to seed, and allowed
to spend itself on unworthy objects. When the right moment comes,
introduce Susie to some delightful study, of Nature, for example, which will
employ all her prying proclivities. Once the new idea has taken possession
of the little girl, a little talk should follow about the unworthiness of filling
one’s thoughts with trifling matters so that nothing really interesting can get
in. For weeks together see that Susie’s mind is too full of large matters to
entertain the small ones; and, once the inquisitive habit has been checked,
encourage the child’s active mind to definite progressive work on things
worth while. Susie’s unworthy curiosity will soon cease to be a trial to her
parents.

CHAPTER XVII

SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS

Part I

Children whose parents have little theoretic knowledge of the values of the
various food-stuffs are often thoroughly nourished; their parents rely on
what they call common-sense; and the result is, on the whole, better than if
scientific consideration were given to the family dietary. But this common-
sense has usually scientific opinion for its basis, though the fact may be
forgotten, and when scientific opinion has become the groundwork of habit
it is of more value, and works in a more simple way, than while it is still in
the stage of experiment. In the same way it is a good thing to have such an
acquaintance with the functions of human nature that we act on our
knowledge unconsciously, and do not even know that we possess it. But if
we have no such floating capital of cognisance we must study the subject,
even if we have to make experiments. Most people suppose that the
sensations, feelings, and emotions of a child are matters that take care of
themselves. Indeed, we are apt to use the three terms indiscriminately,
without attaching very clear ideas to them. But they cover, collectively, a
very important educational field; and though common sense, that is to say
judgments formed upon inherited knowledge, often helps us to act wisely
without knowing why, we shall probably act more wisely if we act
reasonably.
Let us consider, first, the subject of sensations. We speak of sensations of
cold, and sensations of heat, and sensations of pain, and we are quite right.
We also speak of sensations of fear and sensations of pleasure, and we are
commonly wrong. The sensations have their origin in impressions received
by the several organs of sense—eye, tongue, nostrils, ear, the surface of the
external skin—and are conveyed by the sensory nerves, some to the spinal

cord and some to the lower region of the brain. Many sensations we know
nothing about; when we become aware of our sensations it is because
communications are sent by nerve fibres, acting as telegraph wires, from the
sensorium to the thinking brain, and this happens when we give our
attention to any one of the multitudinous messages carried by the sensory
nerves. The physiology of the senses is too complicated a subject for us to
touch upon here, but it is deeply interesting, and perhaps no better
introduction exists than Professor Clifford’s little book, “Seeing and
Thinking” (Macmillan). Now the senses are “The Five Gateways of
Knowledge,” to quote the title of a little book which many of us have used
in early days; and an intelligent person should be aware of, and capable of
forming judgments upon, the sensations he receives.
We all recognise that the training of the senses is an important part of
education. One caution is necessary: from the very first a child’s sensations
should be treated as matters of objective and not of subjective interest.
Marmalade, for example, is interesting, not because it is “nice”—a fact not
to be dwelt upon at all—but because one can discern in it different flavours
and the modifying effect of the oil secreted in the rind of the orange. We
shall have occasion to speak more of this subject later; but a useful piece of
education is this of centering a child’s interest in the objects which produce
his sensations and not in himself as the receiver of these sensations.
The purpose of so-called object lessons is, to assist a child, by careful
examination of a given object, to find out all he can about it through the use
of his several senses. General information about the object is thrown in and
lodges only because the child’s senses have been exercised, and his interest
aroused. Object lessons are a little in disfavour, just now, for two reasons. In
the first place, miserable fragments are presented to the children which have
little of the character of the object in situ, and are apt to convey inadequate,
if not wrong, ideas. In the next place, object lessons are commonly used as
a means to introduce children to hard words, such as opaque and
translucent, which never become part of their living thought until they pick
them up for themselves incidentally as they have need of them. But the
abuse of this kind of teaching should not cause us to overlook its use. No
child can grow up without daily object teaching, whether casual or of set
purpose, and the more thorough this is the more intelligent and observant
will he become. It is singular how few people are capable of developing an

intelligent curiosity about the most attractive objects, except as their interest
is stimulated from without. The baby is a wonderful teacher in this matter of
object lessons. To be sure his single pupil is his own small self, but his
progress is amazing. At first he does not see any difference between a
picture of a cow and the living animal; big and little, far and near, hard and
soft, hot and cold, are all alike to him; he wishes to hold the moon in his
pinafore, to sit on the pond, to poke his finger into the candle, not because
he is a foolish little person, but because he is profoundly ignorant of the
nature of the contents of this unintelligible world. But how he works! he
bangs his spoon to try if it produces sound; he sucks it to try its flavour; he
fumbles it all over and no doubt finds out whether it is hard or soft, hot or
cold, rough or smooth; he gazes at it with the long gaze of infancy, so that
he may learn the look of it; it is an old friend and an object of desire when
he sees it again, for he has found out that there is much joy in a spoon. This
goes on with great diligence for a couple of years, at the end of which time
baby has acquired enough knowledge of the world to conduct himself in a
very dignified and rational way.
This is what happens under Nature’s teaching; and for the first five or six
years of his life everything, especially everything in action, is an object of
intelligent curiosity to the child—the street or the field is a panorama of
delight, the shepherd’s dog, the baker’s cart, the man with the barrow, are
full of vivid interest. He has a thousand questions to ask, he wants to know
about everything; he has, in fact, an inordinate appetite for knowledge. We
soon cure all that: we occupy him with books instead of things; we evoke
other desires in place of the desire to know; and we succeed in bringing up
the unobservant man (and more unobservant woman), who discerns no
difference between an elm, a poplar and a lime tree, and misses very much
of the joy of living. By the way, why is it that the baby does not exercise
with purpose his organ of smell? He screws up a funny little nose when he
is taught to sniff at a flower, but this is a mere trick; he does not naturally
make experiments as to whether things are odorous, while each of his other
senses affords him keen joy. No doubt the little nose is involuntarily very
active, but can his inertness in this matter be an hereditary failing? It may
be that we all allow ourselves to go about with obtuse nostrils. If so, this is
a matter for the attention of mothers, who should bring up their children not
only to receive, which is involuntary and vague, but to perceive odours
from the first.

Two points call for our attention in this education of the senses; we must
assist the child to educate himself on Nature’s lines, and we must take care
not to supplant and crowd out Nature and her methods with that which we
call education. Object lessons should be incidental; and this is where the
family enjoys so great an advantage over the school. It is almost impossible
that the school should give any but set lessons, but this sort of teaching in
the family falls in with the occurrence of the object. The child who finds
that wonderful and beautiful object, a “paper” wasp’s nest, attached to a
larch-twig, has his object lesson on the spot from father or mother. The grey
colour, the round symmetrical shape, the sort of cup and ball arrangement,
the papery texture, the comparative size, the comparative smoothness, the
odour or lack of odour, the extreme lightness, the fact that it is not cold to
the touch. These and fifty other particulars the child finds out unaided, or
with no more than a word, here and there, to direct his observation. One
does not every day find a wasp’s nest, but much can be got out of every
common object, and the commoner the better, which falls naturally under
the child’s observation, a piece of bread, a lump of coal, a sponge. In the
first place it is unnecessary in the family to give an exhaustive examination
to every object; one quality might be discussed in this, another quality in
that. We eat our bread and milk and notice that bread is absorbent, and we
overhaul our experience to discover other things which we know to be
absorbent also, and we do what we can to compare these things as to
whether they are less absorbent or more absorbent than bread. This is
exceedingly important: the unobservant person states that an object is light
and considers that he has stated an ultimate fact: the observant person
makes the same statement, but has in his mind a relative scale, and his
judgment is of the more value because he compares it silently with a series
of substances to which this is relatively light. It is important that children
should learn to recognise that high, low, sweet, bitter, long, short, agreeable,
&c., &c., are comparative terms, while square, round, black, white, are
positive terms, the application of which is not affected by comparison with
other objects. Care in this matter makes for higher moral, as well as
intellectual development: half the dissensions in the world arise from an
indiscriminate use of epithets. “Would you say your bread (at dinner) was
light or heavy?” The child would probably answer, “rather light.” “Yes, we
can only say that a thing is light by comparing it with others; what is bread
light compared with?” “A stone, a piece of coal, of cheese, of butter of the

same size.” “But it is heavy compared with?” “A piece of sponge cake, a
piece of sponge, of cork, of pumice,” and so on. “What do you think it
weighs?” “An ounce, an ounce and a half.” “We’ll try after dinner; you had
better have another piece and save it,” and the weighing after dinner is a
delightful operation. The power of judging of weight is worth cultivating.
We heard the other day of a gentleman who was required at a bazaar to
guess the weight of a monster cake; he said it weighed twenty-eight pounds
fourteen ounces, and it did, exactly. Cæteris paribus, one has a greater
respect for the man who made this accurate judgment than for the well-
intentioned but vague person, who suggested that the cake might weigh ten
pounds. Letters, book parcels, an apple, an orange, a vegetable marrow,
fifty things in the course of the day give opportunities for this kind of object
teaching, i.e., the power of forming accurate judgments as to the relative
and absolute weight of objects by their resistance, which is perceived by our
sense of touch, though opposed to our muscular force. By degrees the
children are trained to perceive that the relative weights of objects depend
upon their relative density, and are introduced to the fact that we have a
standard of weight.
In the same way children should be taught to measure objects by the eye.
How high is that candlestick? How long and broad that picture-frame? and
so on—verifying their statements. What is the circumference of that bowl?
of the clock-face? of that flower-bed? How tall is so-and-so, and so-and-so?
How many hands high are the horses of their acquaintance? Divide a slip of
wood, a sheet of paper into halves, thirds, quarters by the eye; lay a
walking-stick at right angles with another; detect when a picture, curtain,
&c., hangs out of the perpendicular. This sort of practice will secure for
children what is called a correct or true eye.
A quick and true ear is another possession that does not come by Nature,
or anyway, if it does, it is too often lost. How many sounds can you
distinguish in a sudden silence out of doors? Let these be named in order
from the less to the more acute. Let the notes of the birds be distinguished,
both call-notes and song-notes; the four or five distinct sounds to be heard
in the flow of a brook. Cultivate accuracy in distinguishing footfalls and
voices; in discerning, with their eyes shut, the direction from which a sound
proceeds, in which footsteps are moving. Distinguish passing vehicles by
their sounds; as lorry, brougham, dog-cart. Music is, no doubt, the

instrument par excellence for this kind of ear culture. Mrs. Curwen’s “Child
Pianist” puts carefully graduated means for this kind of culture into the
hands of parents; and, if a child never become a performer, to have acquired
a cultivated and correct ear is no small part of a musical education.
We do not attach enough importance to the discrimination of odours,
whether as a safeguard to health, or as a source of pleasure. Half the people
one knows have nostrils which register no difference between the
atmosphere of a large, and so-called “airy,” room, whose windows are never
opened, and that of a room in which a through current of air is arranged for
at frequent intervals: and yet health depends largely on a delicate perception
as to the purity of the atmosphere. The odours which result in diphtheria or
typhoid are perceptible, however faint, and a nose trained to detect the
faintest malodorous particles in food, clothing, or dwelling, is a panoply
against disease to the possessor.
Then, odours enter more readily than other sense perceptions into
those—
“Sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,”

which add so much to the sum of our happiness, because they unite
themselves so readily with our purely incorporeal joys by links of
association. “I never smell woodruff without being reminded——” is the
sort of thing we hear and say continually, but we do not trouble ourselves to
realise that we owe a double joy to the odour of the woodruff (or it may be,
alas! a reflected sorrow)—the joy of the pleasant influences about us when
we pluck the flower, and the possibly more personal joy of that other time
with which we associate it. Every new odour perceived is a source, if not of
warning, of recurrent satisfaction or interest. We are acquainted with too
few of the odours which the spring-time offers. Only this spring the present
writer learned two peculiarly delightful odours quite new to her, that of
young larch twigs, which have much the same kind and degree of fragrance
as the flower of the syringa, and the pleasant musky aroma of a box-hedge.
Children should be trained, for example, to shut their eyes when they come
into the drawing-room and discover by their nostrils what odorous flowers
are present, should discriminate the garden odours let loose by a shower of
rain:—

“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it.
* * * * *
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odourless,
It is for my mouth for ever, I am in love with it.
* * * * *
The sniff of green leaves, and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-coloured sea-rocks,
and of hay in the barn.”

—The American poet has, perhaps, done more than any other to express the
pleasure to be found in odours. This is one direction in which much remains
to be done; we have not yet arrived even at a scale of odours, as of sound
and of colour.
Flavour, again, offers a wide range for delicate discrimination. At first
sight it would appear difficult to cultivate the sense of flavour without
making a child more or less of a gourmand, but the fact is, that the strong
flavours which titillate the palate destroy the power of perception. The
young child who lives upon milk-foods has, probably, more pleasure in
flavour than the diner-out who is au fait with the confections of a cordon
bleu. At the same time, one would prefer to make flavour a source of
interest rather than of sensuous pleasure to children: it is better that they
should try to discern a flavour with their eyes shut, for example, than that
they should be allowed to think or say that things are “nice” or “nasty.” This
sort of fastidiousness should be cried down. It is not well to make a child
eat what he does not like, as that would only make him dislike that
particular dish always; but to let him feel that he shows a want of self-
control and manliness when he expresses distaste for wholesome food is
likely to have a lasting effect.
We have barely touched on the sorts of object lessons, appealing now to
one sense and now to another, which should come incidentally every day in
the family. We are apt to regard an American Indian as a quite uneducated
person; he is, on the contrary, highly educated in so far as that he is able to
discriminate sensory impressions, and to take action upon these in a way
which is bewildering to the book-learned European. It would be well for
parents to educate a child, for the first half-dozen years of his life at any
rate, on “Red Indian” lines. Besides the few points we have mentioned, he
should be able to discriminate colours and shades of colour; relative degrees

of heat in woollen, wood, iron, marble, ice; should learn the use of the
thermometer; should discriminate objects according to their degrees of
hardness; should have a cultivated eye and touch for texture; should, in fact,
be able to get as much information about an object from a few minutes’
study, as to its form, colour, texture, size, weight, qualities, parts,
characteristics, as he could learn out of many pages of a printed book. We
approach the subject by the avenue of the child’s senses rather than by that
of the objects to be studied, because just now we have in view the
occasional test exercises, the purpose of which is to give thorough culture to
the several senses. An acquaintance with nature and natural objects is
another thing, and is to be approached in a slightly different way. A boy
who is observing a beetle does not consciously apply his several senses to
the beetle, but lets the beetle take the initiative, which the boy reverently
follows: but the boy who is in the habit of doing daily sensory gymnastics
will learn a great deal more about the beetle than he who is not so trained.
Definite object lessons differ from these incidental exercises in that an
object is in a manner exhausted by each of the senses in turn and every
atom of information it will yield got out of it. A good plan is to make this
sort of a lesson a game, pass your object round—piece of bread, for
example—and let each child tell some fact that he discovers by touch,
another round by smell, again by taste, and again by sight. Children are
most ingenious in this kind of game, and it affords opportunities to give
them new words, as friable, elastic, when they really ask to be helped to
express some discovery they have made. The children learn to think with
exactitude too, to distinguish between friable and brittle, for example, and
any common information that is offered to them in the course of these
exercises becomes a possession for ever. A good game in the nature of an
object lesson, suitable for a birthday party, is to have a hundred small
objects arranged on a table, unknown to the children, then lead the little
party into the room, allow them three minutes to walk round the table, and
then, when they have left the room, let them write, or tell in a corner, the
names of all the objects they recollect. Some children will easily get fifty or
sixty.
No doubt the best and happiest exercise of the senses springs out of a
loving familiarity with the world of nature, but the sorts of gymnastics we
have indicated render the perceptions more acute and are greatly enjoyed by

children. That the sensations should not be permitted to minister unduly to
the subjective consciousness of the child is the great point to be borne in
mind.

CHAPTER XVIII

SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS

Part II

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings, too,
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.”
—W. Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.

Insight—the so to speak scientific grip of a great poet—is amongst those
“more things” in heaven and earth than our philosophy has dreamed of.
Wordsworth tells us that after the lapse of years, these beauteous forms (of
Tintern Abbey) gave him sensations. Now we are apt to think that
sensations can only be immediate, perceived on the instant that the object is
present to the senses; but the poet is, as usual, absolutely right: we may
have, so to speak, reflected sensations, as well as those that are immediate,
because a conscious sensation depends upon the recognition of an
impression in the sensory centres, and this recognition may be evoked, not
only by a repeated sensation, but by an association which recalls the image
once permanently impressed by the original sensation. Wordsworth is
exquisitely right when he speaks of the repeated enjoyment of sensations
sweet. “In lonely rooms and ’mid the din of towns and cities” some sudden
touch of the cords of association has brought to him the soothing joy of a

picture—“Forms” with every grace of symmetry, harmony, venerable
antiquity, in the ever fresh and gracious setting of a beautiful landscape. The
eye of his mind is infinitely gladdened; the ear of his mind, no longer
conscious of the din of cities, hears the chord struck by the Wye in its flow,
and the notes of the birds and the lowing of the cattle and the acuter notes
of the insect world. Again he perceives the odour of the meadow-sweet, he
touches the coolness of the grass, and all these are as absolutely sensations
as when they were for the first time conveyed to his consciousness by the
sensory organs.
We have in these few lines a volume of reasons why we should fill the
storehouse of memory for the children with many open-air images, capable
of giving them reflected sensations of extreme delight. Our care all the time
must be to secure that they do look, and listen, touch, and smell, and the
way to this is by sympathetic action on our part: what we look at they will
look at; the odours we perceive they too will get. We heard, the other day,
of a little girl who travelled in Italy with her parents, in the days of
dignified family travelling-carriages. The child’s parents were
conscientious, and time was precious, not by any means to be wasted on the
mere idleness of travelling, so the governess and the little girl had the coupé
to themselves, and in it were packed all the paraphernalia of the
schoolroom, and she did her sums, learned her geography, probably the
counties of England, and all the rest of it, with the least possible waste of
time in idle curiosity as to what the “faire londes,” through which she was
passing, might be like. A story like this shows that we are making advances,
but we are still far from fully recognising that our part in the education of
children should be thoughtfully subordinated to that played by Nature
herself.
To continue our study of this amazingly accurate, as well as exquisitely
beautiful, psychological record:—the poet goes on to tell us that these
sensations sweet are “felt in the blood and felt along the heart,” a statement
curiously true to fact, for a pleasurable sensation causes the relaxation of
the infinitesimal nerve fibres netted around the capillaries, the blood flows
freely, the heart beats quicker, the sense of well-being is increased; gaiety,
gladness supervene; and the gloom of the dull day, and the din of the busy
city, exist for us no more; that is to say, memories of delight are, as it were,

an elixir of life capable, when they present themselves, of restoring us at
any moment to a condition of physical well-being.
But even this is not the whole. Wordsworth speaks of these memories as
“passing into my purer mind with tranquil restoration”—purer because less
corporeal, less affected by physical conditions, but all the same so
intimately related to the physical brain, that the condition of the one must
rule the other. Mind and brain perhaps have been alike fagged by the
insistent recurrence of some one line of thought, when suddenly there
flashes into the “purer mind” the cognition of images of delight, represented
in consequence of a touch to some spring of association: the current of
thought is diverted into new and delightful channels, and weariness and
brain fag give place to “tranquil restoration.”
If mere sensations are capable of doing so much for our happiness, our
mental refreshment, and our physical well-being, both at the time of their
reception and for an indefinite number of times afterwards, it follows that it
is no small part of our work as educators to preserve the acuteness of the
children’s perceptions, and to store their memories with images of delight.
The poet pursues the investigation and makes a pointed distinction; he
not only recovers “sensations sweet,” but “feelings, too, of unremembered
pleasure.” Very few persons are capable of discriminating between the
sensations and the feelings produced by an image recovered by some train
of association. Wordsworth’s psychology is not only delicately nice, but
very just, and the distinction he draws is important to the educator. The
truth is “the feelings” are out of fashion at present; The Man of Feeling is a
person of no account; if he still exists he keeps in the shade, being aware,
through a certain quickness of perception which belongs to him, that any
little efflorescence proper to his character would be promptly reduced to
pulp by the application of a sledge hammer. The Man of Feeling has himself
to thank for this; he allowed his feelings to become fantastic; his sweet
sensibilities ran away with him; he meant pathos and talked bathos; he
became an exaggerated type, and in self-preservation Society always cut off
the offending limb, so The Man of Feeling is no more. Nor is this the only
charge that “the feelings” have to sustain. So long as the feelings remain
objective they are, like the bloom to the peach, the last perfection of a
beautiful character; but when they become subjective, when every feeling
concerns itself with the ego, we have, as in the case of sensations, morbid

conditions set up; the person begins by being “over sensitive,” hysteria
supervenes, perhaps melancholia, an utterly spoilt life. George Eliot has a
fine figure which aptly illustrates this subjective condition of the feelings.
She tells us that a philosophic friend had pointed out to her that whereas the
surface of a mirror or of a steel plate may be covered with minute scratches
going in every direction, if you hold a lighted candle to the surface all these
random scratches appear to arrange themselves and radiate from the central
flame: just so with the person whose feelings have been permitted to
minister to his egoistic consciousness: all things in heaven and earth are
“felt” as they affect his own personality.
What are the feelings? Perhaps they are best expressed in Coleridge’s
phrase of “a vague appetency of the mind”; and we may do something to
clear our thoughts by a negative examination. The feelings are not
sensations, because they have no necessary connection with the senses; they
are to be distinguished from the two great affections (of love and justice)
because they are not actively exercised upon any objects; they are distinct
from the desires because they demand no gratification; and they are
distinguishable from the intellectual operations which we call thought,
because while thought proceeds from an idea, is active, and arrives at a
result, the feelings arise from perceptions, are passive, and not definitely
progressive.
Every feeling has its positive and its negative, and these in almost
infinitely varying degrees: pleasure, displeasure; appreciation, depreciation;
anticipation, foreboding; admiration, contempt; assurance, hesitancy;
diffidence, complacency; and so on through many more delicate nuances of
feeling that are nameable, and yet more so delicate that language is too
rough an instrument for their expression. It will be observed that all these
feelings have certain conditions in common; none are distinctly moral or
immoral; they have not arrived at the stage of definite thought; they exist
vaguely in what would appear to be a semi-conscious intellectual region.
Why then need we concern ourselves about this little known tract of that
terra incognita which we call human nature? This “why” is the question of
the prose-philosopher—our poet sees deeper. In one of the most exquisitely
discriminating passages in the whole field of poetry, he speaks of feelings
of unremembered pleasure as having no slight or trivial influence on a good
man’s life, as the source of “little nameless unremembered acts of kindness

and of love.” Even the feeling of “unremembered pleasure”—for it is
possible to have the spring of association touched so lightly that one
recovers the feeling of former pleasure without recovering the sensation, or
the image which produced the sensation, but merely just the vague feeling
of the pleasure, as when one hears the word ‘Lohengrin’ and does not wait,
as it were, to recover the sensation of musical delight, but just catches a
waft of the pleasure which the sensation brought—intangible, indefinite as
they are, produce that glow of the heart which warms a good man to “acts
of kindness and of love,” as little, as nameless, and as unremembered as the
feelings out of which they spring.
Nameless as they are, our poet does not hesitate to rank these trifling
acts as the “best portion of a good man’s life.” But it is only out of the good
man’s heart that these good issues come, because, as we have said, the
feelings are not in themselves moral, they act upon that which is there, and
the point brought before us is, that the influence of the feelings is equally
powerful and indirect. Why should the recollection of Tintern Abbey cause
a good man to do some little kind thing? We can only give the ultimate
answer that “God has made us so,” that a feeling of even unremembered
pleasure prompts the good man to give forth out of the good treasure of his
heart in kindness and in love. We have but to think of the outcome of
feelings at the negative pole to convince us of the nice exactitude of the
poet’s psychology. We are not exactly displeased, but unpleased, dull, not
quickened by any feeling of pleasure: let us ask ourselves if, in this
condition of our feelings, we are prompted to any outpouring of love and
kindness upon our neighbours.
Here is another aspect of the feelings of very great importance to us who
have the education of children.
“I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell,”

is a feeling we all know well enough, and is, in fact, that intuitive
perception of character—one of our finest feelings and best guides in life—
which is too apt to be hammered out of us by the constant effort to beat
down our sensibilities to the explicit and definite. One wonders why people
complain of faithless friends, untrustworthy servants, and disappointed
affections. If the feelings were retained in truth and simplicity, there is little
doubt that they would afford for each of us such a touchstone of character in

the persons we come in contact with, that we should be saved from making
exigeant demands on the one hand, and from suffering disappointment on
the other.
The public orator plays, by preference, upon the gamut of the feelings.
He throws in arguments by the way; brightens his discourse with graphic
word-picture, metaphor, simile; but for his final effect he relies upon the
impression he has been able to make upon the feelings of his audience, and
the event proves him to be right.
Not only our little nameless acts but the great purposes of our lives arise
out of our feelings. Enthusiasm itself is not thought, though it arises when
we are
“Stung with the rapture of a sudden thought;”

it is a glowing, malleable condition of the forces of our nature, during
which all things are possible to us, and we only wait for a lead. Enthusiasm
in its earliest stage is inconsequent, incoherent, devoid of purpose, and yet
is the state out of which all the great purposes of life shape themselves. We
feel, we think, we say, we do; this is the genesis of most of our activities.
But our feelings, as our thoughts, depend upon what we are; we feel in
all things as “’tis our nature to,” and the point to be noticed is that our
feelings are educable, and that in educating the feelings we modify the
character. A pressing danger of our day is that the delicate task of educating
shall be exchanged for the much simpler one of blunting the feelings. This
is the almost inevitable result of a system where training is given en masse;
but not the necessary result, because the tone of feeling of a head-master or
mistress is almost with certainty conveyed, more or less, to a whole school.
Still, perhaps, the perfect bloom of the feelings can only be preserved under
quite judicious individual culture, and, therefore, necessarily devolves upon
parents. The instrument to be employed in this culture is always the same—
the blessed sixth sense of Tact. It is possible to call up the feeling one
desires by a look, a gesture; to dissipate it entirely by the rudeness of a
spoken word. Our silence, our sympathy, our perception give place and play
to fit feelings, and equally discourage, and cause to slink away ashamed the
feeling which should not have place. But let us beware of words; let us use
our eyes and our imagination in dealing with the young; let us see what they
are feeling and help them by the flow of our responsive feeling. But words,

even words of praise and tenderness, touch this delicate bloom of nature as
with a hot finger, and behold! it is gone. Let us consider carefully what
feelings we wish to stimulate, and what feelings we wish to repress in our
children, and then, having made up our minds, let us say nothing. We all
know the shrinking, as of a sore place, with which children receive some
well-meant word from a tactless friend.
The sense of spiritual touch is our only guide in this region of the
feelings, but with this alone we may tune the spirits of the children to great
issues, believing that they are capable of all things great. We wish them to
revere. Now reverence is a feeling before it becomes a thought or an act,
and it is a communicable feeling, but communicable like the light of a torch
only by contact. The sentiment of reverence fills our own souls when we
see a bird on its nest, an old man at his cottage door, a church in which have
centred the aspirations of a village for many an age; we feel and the
children feel our feeling, and they feel too: a feeling is communicated by
sympathy, but perhaps in no other way. The ignoble habit of depreciation is
in the first place a feeling. It is quite easy to put the children into that other
attitude of feeling called forth by the fitness and goodness of the thing
regarded, and we all know that it is easy to appreciate or depreciate the
same thing. These two feelings alone illustrate the importance of the
delicate culture we have in view, for among the minor notes of character
none tend more to differentiate persons than this of perceiving cause of
satisfaction in an object or a person, or of perceiving cause of
dissatisfaction in the same object or person. An appreciative habit of feeling
is a cause of tranquil joy to its possessor, and of ease and contentment to the
people connected with him. A depreciative habit, on the contrary, though it
affords a little pleasurable excitement because it ministers to the vanity of
the ego (I dislike this person or this thing, therefore I know better or am
better than others), disturbs tranquillity and puts the person out of harmony
with himself and with his surroundings; no stable joy comes of
depreciation. But even in dealing with feelings of this class we must
remember that tact, sympathy and communicable feeling are our only
implements; the feelings are not thoughts to be reasoned down; they are
neither moral nor immoral to challenge our praise or our blame; we cannot
be too reticent in our dealings with them in children, nor too watchfully
aware that the least inadvertence may bruise some tender blossom of
feeling. This is the risk which attends the habit of persiflage and banter in

family talk; a little is thoroughly good and wholesome, but this kind of play
should be used with very great tact, especially by the elders. Children
understand each other so well that there is far less risk of hurt feelings from
the tormenting schoolboy than from the more considerate elder.
There is only one case in which the feelings may not have free play, and
that is when they reflect the consciousness of the ego. What are commonly
called sensitive feelings—that is, susceptibility for oneself and about
oneself, readiness to perceive neglect or slight, condemnation or
approbation—though belonging to a fine and delicate character, are in
themselves of less worthy order, and require very careful direction lest
morbid conditions should be set up. To ignore wisely is an art, and the girl
who craves to know what you thought of her when she said this or did the
other, need not be told brutally that you did not think of her at all; it is quite
enough for her to perceive that your regard is fixed upon something
impersonal both to her and you; she takes the hint and looks away from
herself, and nothing is said to cause her pain. It appears to be an immutable
law that our feelings, as our sensations, must find their occupation in things
without; the moment they are turned in upon themselves harm is done. The
task of dealing with the susceptibilities of young people is one of the most
delicate that falls to us elders, whether we be parents or friends.
Undiscriminating sympathy is very perilous, and bluntness of perception is
very damaging; we are between Scylla and Charybdis, and must needs walk
humbly and warily in this delicate work of dealing with the feelings of
children and young people. Our only safeguard is to cherish in ourselves
“the soft, meek, tender soul,” sensitive to the touch of God, and able to deal
in soft, meek, tender ways with children, beings of fine and delicate mould
as they are.

CHAPTER XIX

“WHAT IS TRUTH?”

It is said that we English are no longer to be characterised as a truth-
speaking people. This is a distressing charge, and yet we cannot put it away
from us with a high hand. Possibly we are in a stage of civilisation which
does not tend to produce the fine courage of absolute truthfulness. He who
is without fear is commonly without falsehood; and a nation brought up
amid the chivalries of war dares to be true. But we live in times of peace:
we are no longer called on to defend the truth of our word by the strength of
our hand. We speak with very little sense of responsibility, because no one
calls us to account; and, so far as we are truth-tellers, we are so out of pure
truth of heart and uprightness of life. That is, we may be, as a nation, losing
the habit of truth to which the nation’s childhood was trained, in ways
however rough and ready; but we are growing up, and the truth that is
among us is perhaps of a higher quality than the more general truthfulness
of earlier days. Now, truth is indeed the white flower of a blameless life,
and not the mere result of a fearless habit. The work before us is to bring up
our children to this higher manner of truth. We no longer treat this or that
particular lie or bit of deceit as a local ailment, for which we have only to
apply the proper lotion or plaster; we treat it as symptomatic, as denoting a
radical defect of character which we set ourselves to correct.
Opinion without knowledge, says Darwin, has no value, and to treat the
tendency to untruthfulness that children often show, one should have a good
deal of knowledge of a special kind. To treat a child de novo, place him
under a moral microscope, record our observations, and formulate opinions
based upon that child, and as many more as we can get into focus, is, no
doubt, useful and important work. But it is work for which we must qualify
ourselves. The child is a human being, immature, but yet, perhaps, a human
being at his best. Who amongst us has such gifts of seeing, knowing,
comprehending, imagining, such capacities for loving, giving, believing, as

the little child in the midst! We have no higher praise for our wisest and best
than that they are fresh and keen as little children in their interests and
loves.
Now, we maintain that it is not sufficient to bring unaided common sense
and good intentions to this most delicate art of child-study. We cannot
afford to discard the wisdom of the past and begin anew with the effort to
collect and systematise, hoping to accomplish as much and more in our
short span than the centuries have brought us.
In this matter of lying, for example, unaided common sense is likely to
start upon one of two theses: either the child is born true, and you must
keep him so; or, the child is born false, and you must cure him of it. Popular
opinion leans strongly to the first theory in these days; and, as we perceive
only that which we believe, the tendency is, perhaps, to take the absolute
truthfulness and honour of children a little too much for granted. If you
would have children true, you must, of course, treat them as if they were
true, and believe them to be true. But, all the same, wisdom may not play
the ostrich. In the last generation, people accepted their children as born
false, and, what more likely to make them so than this foregone conclusion?
Possibly some falling off in truthfulness in our day is traceable to the
dogmatic teaching upon which our forbears were brought up.
The wisdom of the ages—i.e., philosophy, and the science of the present,
especially physiology, and more particularly what we may call psycho-
physiology—show us that both these positions are wrong, and that all
theories founded upon either position, or upon any midway point between
the two, must needs be wrong too. A child is born neither true nor false. He
is absolutely without either virtue or vice when he comes into the world. He
has tendencies, indeed, but these are no more either virtuous or vicious than
is the colour of his eyes. Even the child of a liar is not necessarily born a
liar, because, we are assured, acquired tendencies are not transmitted. But
there is this to be said. The child born of a family which has from
generation to generation been in a subject position may have less
predisposition to truthfulness than the child of a family which has belonged
for generations to the ruling class. As in the natural world all substances
must be reduced to their elements before they can be chemically dealt with,
so in the moral world, if we wish to treat an offence, it is best to trace it to
that elemental property of human nature of which it is the probable

outcome. Now, lying, even in its worst forms, is by no means elemental.
Ambition is elemental, avarice, vanity, gratitude, love and hate. But lying
arises from secondary causes. The treatment is all the more difficult. It is no
longer a case of—the child has lied, punish him; but, where is the weak
place in his character, or what is the defect in his education, which has
induced this lying habit, if it be a habit? How shall we, not punish the lie,
but treat the failing of which it is symptomatic. From this point of view let
us consider the extremely interesting classification of lies presented to us by
an American educationalist.[15]
I. Pseudophobia. Janet thinks she may have glanced at Mary’s slate, and
seen the answer to her sum. A comparison of the two slates shows that she
has not done so, and that Janet, in the effort to save herself from a lie, has
actually told one. This sort of morbid conscientiousness is Argus-eyed for
other forms of sin. We knew a sick girl of fourteen, who was terribly
unhappy because she was not able to kneel up in bed when she said her
prayers. Was this the “unpardonable sin”? she asked, in unaffected terror.
We agree with the writer in question, as to the frequent occurrence of this
form of distress, and also in tracing it, not to moral, but to physical causes.
We should say, too, it is more common in girls than in boys, and in the
home-taught than in the school-taught child. Healthy interests, out-of-door
life, engrossing and delightful handiworks, general occupation with things
rather than with thoughts, and avoidance of any word or hint that may lead
to self-consciousness or the habit of introspection, will probably do much to
carry the young sufferer through a difficult stage of life.
II. The Lie Heroic. The lie heroic is, par excellence, the schoolboy’s lie,
and has its rise, not in any love for lying, but in a want of moral balance;
that is to say, the boy has been left to form his own code of ethics.
Who spilled the ink? little Tom Brown is asked. “I did,” he says; because
Jack Spender, the real culprit, is his particular hero at the moment.
Faithfulness to a friend is a far higher virtue in Tom’s eyes than mere barren
truthfulness. And how is Tom to know, if he has not been taught, that it is
unlawful to cherish one virtue at the expense of another. Considering how
little clear, definite, authoritative teaching children receive on ethical
questions, the wonder is that most persons do elaborate some kind of moral
code, or code of honour, for themselves.

III. Truth for friends, lies for enemies. A lie under this head differs from
the lie heroic chiefly in that it need not bring any risk to the speaker. This
class of lies again points to the moral ignorance which we are slow to
recognise in children because we confound innocence with virtue. It is quite
natural for a child to believe that truth is relative, and not absolute, and that
whether a lie is a lie or not depends on whom you are speaking to. The
children are in the position of “jesting Pilate.” What is truth? they
unconsciously ask.
IV. Lies inspired by selfishness. This is a form of lying for which
superficial treatment is quite idle. The lie and the vice of which it is the
instrument are so allied that those two cannot be put asunder. Professor
Stanley Hall well points out that school is a fertile field for this kind of
lying. But it is the selfishness and not the lying that must be dealt with.
Cure the first, and the second disappears, having no further raison d’être.
How? This is a hard question. Nothing but a strong impulse to the heroism
of unselfishness, initiated and sustained by the grace of God, will deliver
boy or girl from the vice of selfishness of which lying is the ready
handmaid. But let us not despair; every boy and girl is open to such
impulse, is capable of heroic effort. Prayer and patience, and watchfulness
for opportunities to convey the stimulating suggestion—these will not be in
vain. Every boy and girl is a hero in posse. There is no worse infidelity than
that which gives up the hope of mending any flaw of character, however
bad, in a young creature. All the same, happy those parents who have not
allowed selfishness and virtue (whether in the form of truthfulness, or under
some other name), to come to hand to hand conflict. It is easy to give
direction to the tendencies of a child; it is agonisingly difficult to alter the
set of character in a man.
V. The Deception of imagination and play. I passed little Muriel in the
park one day; the child was not looking; her companion was unknown to
me. I was engaged with my companion, and believed that Muriel had not
noticed me. The little girl went home and told her mother that I had kissed
her and asked various questions about the family health. What could be the
child’s motive? She had none. Her active imagination rehearsed the little
dialogue which most naturally would have taken place; and this was so real
to her that it obscured the fact. The reality, the truth, to Muriel, was what
she imagined had taken place. She had probably no recollection whatever of

the actual facts. This sort of failure in verbal truthfulness is excessively
common in imaginative children, and calls for prompt attention and
treatment; but not on the lines a hasty and righteous parent might be
inclined to adopt. Here is no call for moral indignation. The parents and not
the child are in fault. The probability is that the child’s ravenous
imagination is not duly and daily supplied with its proper meat, of fairy tale
in early days, of romance, later. Let us believe of the children that “trailing
clouds of glory do they come” from the place where all things are possible,
where any delightful thing may happen. Let us believe that our miserable
limitations of time and space and the laws of matter irk them inconceivably,
imprison the free soul as a wild bird in a cage. If we refuse to give the child
outlets into the realms of fancy, where everything is possible, the delicate
Ariel of his imagination will still work within our narrow limits upon our
poor tasks, and every bit of our narrow living is played over with a
thousand variations, apt to be more vivid and interesting than the poor facts,
and, therefore, more likely to remain with the child as the facts which he
will produce when required to speak the truth. What is the cure? Give the
child free entrance into, abundant joyous living in, the kingdom of make-
believe. Let him people every glen with fairies, every island with Crusoes.
Let him gift every bird and beast with human interests, which he will share
when the dear fairy godmother arrives with an introduction. Let us be glad
and rejoice that all things are possible to the children, recognising in this
condition of theirs their fitness to receive and believe and understand, as,
alas! we cannot do, the things of the Kingdom of God. The age of faith is a
great sowing time, doubtless designed, in the Divine scheme of things,
especially that parents may make their children at home in the things of the
Spirit before contact with the world shall have materialised them.
At the same time the more imaginative the child, the more essential is it
that the boundaries of the kingdom of make-believe should be clearly
defined, and exact truthfulness insisted upon in all that concerns the
narrower world where the grown-ups live. It is simply a matter of careful
education; daily lessons in exact statement, without any horror or righteous
indignation about misstatements, but warm, loving encouragement to the
child who gives a long message quite accurately, who tells you just what
Miss Brown said and no more, just what happened at Harry’s party, without
any garnish. Every day affords scope for a dozen little lessons at least, and,

gradually, the more severe beauty of truth will dawn upon the child whose
soul is already possessed by the grace of fiction.
VI . Pseudomania. We have little to say on this score, except to counsel
parents to keep watch at the place of the letting out of waters. No doubt the
condition is pathological, and calls for curative treatment rather than
punishment. But we believe it is a condition which never need be set up.
The girl who has been able to win esteem for what she really is and really
does, is not tempted to “pose,” and the boy who has found full outlet for his
energies, physical and mental, has no part of himself left to spend upon
“humbugging.” This is one of the cases which show how important it is for
parents to acquaint themselves with that delicate borderland of human
nature which touches the material and the spiritual. How spiritual thought
and material brain interact; how brain and nerves are inter-dependent; how
fresh air and wholesome food affect the condition of the blood which
nourishes the nerves; how the nerves again may bear tyrannous sway over
all that we include under “bodily health;” these are matters that the parent
should know who would avoid the possibility of the degradation described
as Pseudomania from being set up in any one of his children.
It is as well that those who have to do with young people should be
familiar with one or two marked signs of this mentally diseased condition;
as, the furtive glance from under half-closed lids, shot up to see how you
are taking it all; the flowing recital, accompanied by a slightly absent pre-
occupied look, which denotes that the speaker is in the act of inventing the
facts he relates.
We have not space to enlarge upon palliatives, lies of terror, or one or
two more classes of lies, which seem to us of frequent occurrence, as lies of
display (boasting), lies of carelessness (inaccuracy), and, worst of all, lies of
malice (false witness).
We would only commend the subject to the attention of parents; for,
though one child may have more aptitude than another, neither truthfulness
nor the multiplication table come by nature. The child who appears to be
perfectly truthful is so because he has been carefully trained to truthfulness,
however indirectly and unconsciously. It is more important to cultivate the
habit of truth than to deal with the accident of lying.

Moral teaching must be as simple, direct and definite as the teaching
which appeals to the intellect; presented with religious sanctions, quickened
by religious impulses, but not limited to the prohibitions of the law nor to
the penalties which overtake the transgressor.

FOOTNOTES:
[15] Professor G. Stanley Hall, in an article which appeared in the
American Journal of Psychology, Jan. 1891.

CHAPTER XX

SHOW CAUSE WHY

We have been asking, Why? like Mr. Ward Fowler’s Wagtail, for a long
time. We asked, Why? about linen underclothing, and behold it is discarded.
We asked Why? about numberless petticoats, and they are going. We are
asking Why? about carpets and easy chairs, and all manner of luxurious
living; and probably the year 1900 will see of these things only the
survivals. It is well we should go about with this practical Why? rather than
with the “Why does a wagtail wag its tail?” manner of problem. The latter
issues in vain guesses, and the pseudo-knowledge which puffeth up. But if,
Why? leads us to—“Because we should not; then, let us do the thing we
should.”—This manner of Why? is like a poker to a dying fire.
Why is Tom Jones sent to school? That he may be educated, of course,
say his parents. And Tom is dismissed with the fervent hope that he may
take a good place. But never a word about the delights of learning, or of the
glorious worlds of nature and of thought to which his school studies will
presumably prove an open sesame. “Mind you be a good boy and get a
good place in your class,” is Tom’s valediction; and his little soul quickens
with purpose. He won’t disappoint father, and mother shall be proud of him.
He’ll be the top boy in his class. Why, he’ll be the top boy in the whole
school, and get prizes and things, and won’t that be jolly! Tommy says
nothing of this, but his mother sees it in his eyes and blesses the manly little
fellow. So Tommy goes to school, happy boy, freighted with his father’s
hopes and his mother’s blessings. By-and-by comes a report, the main
delight of which is, that Tommy has gained six places; more places gained,
prizes, removes—by-and-by scholarships. Before he is twelve, Tommy is
able to earn the whole of his future schooling by his skill in that industry of
the young popularly known as Exams. Now he aims at larger game;
“exams” still, but “exams” big with possibilities, “exams” which will carry
him through his University career. His success is pretty certain, because you

get into the trick of “exams” as of other crafts. His parents are
congratulated, Tom is more or less of a hero in his own eyes and in those of
his compeers. Examinations for ever! Hip, hip! Never was a more facile
way for a youth to distinguish himself, that is, if his parents have sent him
into the world blessed with any inheritance of brains. For the boy not so
blessed—why, he may go to the Colonies and that will make a man of him.
The girls come in a close second. The “Junior,” the “Senior,” the
“Higher,” the “Intermediate,” the “B.A.,” and what else you will, mark the
epochs in most girls’ lives. Better, say you, than having no epochs at all.
Unquestionably, yes. But the fact that a successful examination of one sort
or another is the goal towards which most of our young people are
labouring, with feverish haste and with undue anxiety, is one which
possibly calls for the scrutiny of the investigating Why?
In the first place, people rarely accomplish beyond their own aims. The
aim is a pass, not knowledge, “they cram to pass and not to know; they do
pass and they don’t know,” says Mr. Ruskin; and most of us who know the
“candidate” will admit that there is some truth in the epigram. There are,
doubtless, people who pass and who also know, but, even so, it is open to
question, whether passing is the most direct, simple, natural and efficacious
way of securing knowledge, or whether the persons who pass and know are
not those keen and original minds which would get blood out of stone,—
anyway, sap out of sawdust. Again—except for the fine power of resistance
possessed by the human mind, which secures that most persons who go
through examination grind come out as they went in, absolutely unbiassed
towards any intellectual pursuits whatever—except for this, the tendency of
the grind is to imperil that individuality which is the one incomparably
precious birthright of each of us. The very fact of a public examination
compels that all who go in for it must study on the same lines.
It will be urged that there is no necessary limitation to studies outside the
examination syllabus, nor any restrictions whatever as to the direction of
study even upon the syllabus; but this is a mistake. Whatever public
examinations a given school takes, the whole momentum of pupils and staff
urges towards the great issue. As to the manner of study, this is ruled by the
style of questions set in a given subject; and Dry-as-dust wins the day
because it is easier and fairer to give marks upon definite facts than upon
mere ebullitions of fancy or genius. So it comes to pass that there is

absolutely no choice as to the matter or manner of their studies for most
boys and girls who go to school, nor, for many of those who work at home.
For, so great is the convenience of a set syllabus that parents and teachers
are glad to avail themselves of it.
It appears then that the boy is in bondage to the schoolmaster, and the
schoolmaster to the examiner, and the parents do no more than acquiesce.
Would parents be astounded if they found themselves in this matter a little
like the man who had talked prose all his life without knowing it? The
tyranny of the competitive examination is supported for the most part by
parents. We do not say altogether. Teachers do their part manfully; but, in
the first place, teachers unsupported by parents have no power at all in the
matter; not a single candidate could they present beyond their own sons and
daughters; in the next place, we do not hesitate to say that the whole system
is forced upon teachers (though, perhaps, by no means against their will) by
certain ugly qualities of human nature as manifested in parents. Ignorance,
idleness, vanity, avarice, do not carry a pleasant sound; and if we, who
believe in parents, have the temerity to suggest such shadows to the father
basking in the sunshine of his boy’s success, we would add that the rest of
us who are not parents are still more to blame; that it is terribly hard to run
counter to the current of the hour; and that, “harm is wrought through want
of thought.”
Ignorance is excusable, but wilful ignorance is culpable, and the time
has come for the thoughtful parent to examine himself and see whether or
no it be his duty to make a stand against the competitive examination
system. Observe, the evil lies in the competition, not in the examination. If
the old axiom be true, that the mind can know nothing but what it can
produce in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind itself, it is
relatively true that knowledge conveyed from without must needs be tested
from without. Probably, work on a given syllabus tested by a final
examination is the condition of definite knowledge and steady progress. All
we contend for is that the examination shall not be competitive. It will be
urged that it is unfair to rank such public examinations as the Universities’
Local—which have done infinitely much to raise the standard of middle-
class education, especially amongst girls, and upon which neither prize nor
place depends—as competitive examinations. They are rarely competitive,
it is true, in the sense of any extraneous reward to the fortunate candidate;

but, happily, we are not so far gone from original righteousness but that
Distinction is its own reward. The pupil is willing to labour, and rightly so,
for the honour of a pass which distinguishes him among the élite of his
school. The schools themselves compete (con + petere = to seek with) as to
which shall send in the greatest number of candidates and come out with the
greatest number of Honours, Scholarships, and what not. These distinctions
are well advertised, and the parent who is on the look-out for a school for
his boy is all too ready to send him where the chances of distinction are
greatest. Examinations which include the whole school, and where every
boy has his place on the list, higher or lower, are another thing; though
these also appeal to the emulous principle, they do not do so in excess, the
point to be noted.
But, why should so useful an incentive to work as a competitive
examination be called in question? There are certain facts which may be
predicated of every human being who is not, as the country folk say,
“wanting.” Every one wants to get on; whatever place we occupy we aim at
the next above it. Every one wants to get rich, or, anyway, richer; whether
the wealth he chooses to acquire be money or autographs. Every one wants
the society of his fellows; if he does not, we call him a misanthrope and say,
to use another popular and telling phrase, “He’s not quite right.” We all
want to excel, to do better than the rest, whether in a tennis-match or an
examination. We all want to know, though some of us are content to know
our neighbours’ affairs, while others would fain know about the stars in
their courses. We all, from the sergeant in his stripes to the much decorated
commanding officer, want people to think well of us. Now these several
desires, of power, of wealth, of society, of excelling, of knowledge, of
esteem, are primary springs of action in every human being. Touch any one
of them, in savage or in savant, and you cannot fail of a response. The
Russian Moujik besieges a passing traveller with questions about the lands
he has seen, because he wants to know. The small boy gambles with his
marbles because he wants to get. The dairymaid dons a new bow because
she wants to be admired, the only form of esteem to which she is awake.
Tom drives when the children play horses because he wants to rule. Maud
works herself into a fever for her examination because she wants to excel,
and “to pass” is the hallmark of excellence, that is, of those who excel.

Now these primary desires are neither virtuous nor vicious. They are
common to us all and necessary to us all, and appear to play the same part
towards our spiritual being that the appetites do to our material existence;
that is, they stimulate us to the constant effort which is the condition of
progress, and at the same time the condition of health. We know how that
soul stagnates which thinks nothing worth an effort. He is a poor thing who
is content to be beaten on all hands. We do not quarrel with the principle of
emulation, any more than we do with that of respiration. The one is as
natural and as necessary as the other, and as little to be brought before a
moral tribunal. But it is the part of the educator to recognise that a child
does not come into the world a harp with one string; and that the perpetual
play upon this one chord through all the years of adolescence is an evil, not
because emulation is a vicious principle, but because the balance of
character is destroyed by the constant stimulation of this one desire at the
expense of the rest.
Equally strong, equally natural, equally sure of awakening a responsive
stir in the young soul, is the divinely implanted principle of curiosity. The
child wants to know: wants to know incessantly, desperately; asks all
manner of questions about everything he comes across, plagues his elders
and betters, and is told not to bother, and to be a good boy and not ask
questions. But this only sometimes. For the most part we lay ourselves out
to answer Tommy’s questions so far as we are able, and are sadly ashamed
that we are so soon floored by his insatiable curiosity about natural objects
and phenomena. Tommy has his reward. The most surprising educational
feat accomplished amongst us is the amount of knowledge, about
everything within his range, which Tommy has acquired by the end of his
sixth year. “Why, he knows as much as I do, about”—this, and that, and the
other, says his astonished and admiring father. Take him to the seaside, and
in a week he will tell you all about trawling and mackerel fishing; the ways
of the fisher-folk, and all that his inquisitive mind can find out unaided. He
would tell all about sand, and shells, and tides, and waves, only, poor little
boy, he must have help towards this manner of knowledge, and there is no
one to give it to him. However, he finds out all that he can about all that he
sees and hears, and does amass a surprising amount of exact knowledge
about things and their properties.

When Tommy goes to school, his parents find themselves relieved of the
inconvenience of his incessant Why? They are probably so well pleased to
be let off that it does not occur to them to ask themselves Why Tommy no
longer wonders Why? Up to this period nature has been active. She has
been allowed to stimulate that one of his desires most proper to minister to
his mental growth, just as, if let alone, she would give him that hearty
appetite which should promote his physical growth. She has it all her own
way. The desire of knowledge is that spring of action most operative in
Tommy’s childhood. But he goes to school. Knowledge is a pure delight to
Tommy. Let his lessons approach him on the lines of his nature—not on the
lines proper for certain subjects of instruction—and the little boy has no
choice. He cannot help learning and loving to learn, “‘cos ’tis his nature to.”
This, of presenting knowledge to Tommy on the lines of his nature, is,
however, a difficult and delicate task. Not every schoolmaster, any more
than every parent, is keen to give Tommy what he wants in this matter of
needful knowledge. So, once upon a time, let us suppose, there arose a
pedagogue to whom was discovered a new and easier way. The morning
had seen the poor man badly baffled by the queries of boys who wanted to
know. How was a man, who had pretty well done with fresh studies for his
own part, to keep up with these eager intelligences. In a vision of the night
it is disclosed to Cognitus that there is another and an easier way. The desire
of knowledge is not the only desire active in the young bosom. Just as much
as he wants to know, he wants to excel, to do better than the rest. “Every
soul of them wants to be first in one way or another—first in games, if not
in class.” Now, Cognitus was a philosopher; he knew that, as a rule, but one
desire is supremely active at one time in the breast of boy or man. Kindle
their emulation, and all must needs do the same thing in the same way to
see who can do it best. The boys will no longer want to know; they will get
their due share of learning in regular ways, and really get on better than if
they were moved by the restless spirit of inquiry. Eureka! A discovery;
honour and renown for master and boys,—no need for cane or imposition,
for emulation is the best of all disciplinarians,—and steady-going, quiet
work, without any of the fatiguing excursions into new fields to which the
craving for knowledge leads. “How pleased the parents will be, too,” says
Cognitus, for he knows that paternal love, now and then, looks for a little
sustenance from paternal vanity, that the child who does well is dear. Nay,
who knows but the far-seeing Cognitus beheld, as in a vision, the

scholarships and money awards which should help to fill the pocket of
Paternus, or should, any way, lessen the drain thereupon. Here, indeed, is a
better way, upon which Paternus and Cognitus may well consent to walk
together. Every one is happy, every one content, nobody worried, a great
deal of learning got in. What would you have more? Just one thing,
honoured Cognitus, that keen desire for knowledge, that same incessant
Why? with which Tommy went to school, and which should have kept him
inquisitive about all things good and great and wise throughout the years
given to him wherein to lay the groundwork of character, the years of his
youth.
We cannot put our finger upon Cognitus, and are pretty sure that he
arrived by a consensus of opinion, and through considerable urgency on the
part of parents. No one is to blame for a condition of things which is an
enormous advance upon much of what went before. Only, knowledge is
advancing, and it is full time that we reconsider our educational principles
and recast our methods. We absolutely must get rid of the competitive
examination system if we would not be reduced to the appalling mediocrity
which we see in China, for example, to have befallen an examination-ridden
empire. Probably the world has never seen a finer body of educationalists
than those who at the present moment man our schools, both Boys’ and
Girls’. But the originality, the fine initiative, of these most able men and
women is practically lost. The schools are examination-ridden, and the
heads can strike out no important new lines. Let us begin our efforts by
believing in one another, parents in teachers and teachers in parents. Both
parents and teachers have the one desire, the advance of the child along the
lines of character. Both groan equally under the limitations of the present
system. Let us have courage, and united and concerted action will
overthrow this Juggernaut that we have made.

CHAPTER XXI

HERBARTIAN PEDAGOGICS

We in England require, every now and then, to pull ourselves together, and
to ask what they are doing on the continent in the way of education. We still
hark back to the older German educational reformers. We may not know
much of Comenius, Basedow, Ratich; we do know something of the
reformers next in descent, Pestalozzi and Froebel; but how much do we
know of the thought of Johann Friedrich Herbart, the lineal successor of
these, who has largely displaced his predecessors in the field of Pedagogics.
How entirely German educators work upon Herbart, and Herbart only, is
proved by the existence of a Herbartian educational literature greatly more
extensive than the whole of our English educational literature put together.
A little volume on the “Outlines of Pedagogics,”[16] by Professor W.
Rein, of the University of Jena, is offered to us by the translators, C. C. and
Ida J. Van Liew, as a brief introduction to the study of Herbart and his
school, the author making due allowance for the advances that have been
made in the fifty years that have elapsed since Herbart’s death.
As Herbart and his interpreters represent the most advanced school of
educational thought on the continent, it will, perhaps, be interesting to our
readers to make a slight comparison between what we call P.N.E.U.
Philosophy and the school of thought which exercises such immense
influence in Germany.
One of the most characteristic features of Herbart’s thinking, and that
feature of it which constitutes a new school of educational thought, is, that
he rejects the notion of separate mental faculties. The earlier reformers,
notably Pestalozzi and Froebel, divide the faculties up with something of
the precision of a phrenologist, and a chief business of education is,
according to them, “to develop the faculties.” There is a certain pleasing

neatness in this idea which is very attractive. We want to know, definitely,
what we have to do. Why develop the perceptive faculties here, the
conceptive there, the judgment in this lesson, the affections in the other,
until you have covered the whole ground, giving each so-called faculty its
due share of developmental exercise! But, says Herbart, we have changed
all that. The mind, like Wordsworth’s cloud, moves altogether when it
moves at all.
Now this appears to be but a slight fundamental difference, but it is one
upon the recognition of which education changes front. The whole system
of beautifully organised lessons, whose object is to develop this or that, is
called into question. For the raison d’être of specialised intellectual
gymnastics is gone when we no longer recognise particular “muscles” of
the mind to be developed. The aim of education must be something quite
other, and, if the aim is other, the methods must be altered, for what is
method but a way to an end. So far we are entirely with Herbart; we do not
believe in the “faculties;” therefore we do not believe in the “development
of the faculties;” therefore we do not regard lessons as instruments for this
“development”: in fact, our whole method of procedure is altered.
Again, we are with the philosopher in his recognition of the force of an
idea, and especially of those ideas which are, as we phrase it, in the air at
any given moment. “Both the circle of the family and that of social
intercourse are subjected to forces that are active in the entire social body,
and that penetrate the entire atmosphere of human life in invisible channels.
No one knows whence these currents, these ideas arise; but they are there.
They influence the moods, the aspirations, and the inclinations of humanity,
and no one however powerful can withdraw himself from their effects; no
sovereign’s command makes its way into their depths. They are often born
of a genius to be seized upon by the multitude that soon forgets their author;
then the power of the thought that has thus become active in the masses
again impels the individual to energetic resolutions: in this manner it is
constantly describing a remarkable circle. Originating with those that are
highly gifted, these thoughts permeate all society, reaching, in fact, not only
its adult members, but also through these its youth, and appearing again in
other highly gifted individuals in whom they will perhaps have been
elevated to a definite form.

“Whether the power of these dominant ideas is greater in the individual,
or in the body of individuals as a whole, is a matter of indifference here. Be
that as it may, it cannot be denied that their effect upon the one is
manifested in a reciprocal action upon the other, and that their influence
upon the younger generation is indisputable.”
We entirely agree that no one can escape the influence of this Zeitgeist,
and that the Zeitgeist is, in fact, one of the most powerful of the occult
educational influences, and one which parents and all who have the training
of children will do well to reckon with in the adjustment of their work.
Nature, family, social intercourse, this Zeitgeist, the Church and the
State, thus Professor Rein, as interpreting Herbart, sums up the
schoolmasters under whose influences every child grows up; a suggestive
enumeration we should do well to consider. “Erziehung ist Sache der
Familien; von da geht sie aus und dahin kehrt sie grössenteils zurück,” says
Herbart. He considers, as do we, that by far the most valuable part of
education is carried on in the family, because of the union of all the
members under a common parentage, of the feeling of dependence upon a
head, of the very intimate knowledge to be gained of the younger members.
“The members of the family look confidently to the head; and this sense
of dependence favours, at the same time, the proper reception of that which
is dearest to mankind, namely, the religious feeling. If the life of the family
is permeated by a noble piety, a sincere religious faith will take root in the
hearts of the children. Faithful devotion to the guide of the youth also calls
forth faithful devotion to Him who controls human destinies—a thought
which Herbart expresses so beautifully in the words—‘To the child, the
family should be the symbol of the order in the world; from the parents one
should derive by idealisation the characteristics of the deity.’”
This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation to
Almighty God is one which we of the P.N.E.U. have ever laboured to
enforce. We take a very distinct stand upon this point. We do not merely
give a religious education, because that would seem to imply the possibility
of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that
all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes
from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of
mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may, at the same

time, be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and
intimacy with the Supreme, in which our being finds its fullest perfection.
We hold, in fact, that noble conception of education held by the mediæval
church, as pictured upon the walls of the Spanish chapel in Florence. Here
we have represented the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Twelve, and
directly under them, fully under the illuminating rays, are the noble figures
of the seven liberal arts, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Music, Astronomy,
Geometry, Arithmetic, and under these again the men who received and
expressed, so far as we know, the initial idea in each of these subjects; such
men as Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Euclid, whom we might call pagans, but
whom the earlier Church recognised as divinely taught and illuminated.
Here follows a passage which we do more than endorse, for it contains
the very raison d’être of our society. “The education of the children will
always remain the holiest and highest of all family duties. The welfare,
civilisation, and culture of a people depend essentially upon the degree of
success that attends the education in the homes. The family principle is the
point at which both the religious and educational life of a people centres,
and about which it revolves. It is a force in comparison with which every
sovereign’s command appears powerless.”
By the way, we are inclined to think that Dr. Rein’s mention of Rousseau
is a little misleading. It is true that in “Emil” the parents are supplanted, but,
notwithstanding that fact, perhaps no other educationalist has done so much
to awaken parents to their great work as educators. After investigating the
conditions of home training, Dr. Rein proceeds to a discussion of schools
(a) as they exist in Germany—(b) as they exist in his own ideal, a
discussion which should be most interesting to parents.
Teleology, i.e., the theory of the purpose of education, falls next under
discussion in an extremely instructive chapter. It is well we should know the
vast uncertainty which exists on this fundamental point. As a matter of fact,
few of us know definitely what we propose to ourselves in the education of
our children. We do not know what it is possible to effect, and, as a man
does not usually compass more than he aims at, the results of our education
are very inadequate and unsatisfactory.
“Shall the educator follow Rousseau and educate a man of nature in the
midst of civilised men? In so doing, as Herbart has shown, we should

simply repeat from the beginning the entire series of evils that have already
been surmounted. Or shall we turn to Locke and prepare the pupil for the
world which is customarily in league with worldlings? We should then
arrive at the standpoint of Basedow, and aim to educate the pupil so that he
would become a truly useful member of human society. Of course we
should always be harassed with the secret doubt as to whether this is the
ideal purpose after all, and whether we are not at times directly enjoined to
place the pupil at variance with the usage and customary dealings of the
world. If we reflect that an endless career is open to man for his
improvement, we realise that only that education, whose aims are always
the highest, can hope to reach the lofty goals that mark this career.
“Therefore an ideal aim must be present in the mind of the educator.
Possibly he can obtain information and help from Pestalozzi, whose nature
evinced such ideal tendencies. Pestalozzi wished the welfare of mankind to
be sought in the harmonious cultivation of all powers. If one only knew
what is to be understood by a multiplicity of mental powers, and what is
meant by the harmony of various powers. These phrases sound very
attractive, but give little satisfaction. The purely formal aims of education
will appeal just as little to the educator: ‘Educate the pupil to
independence;’ or, ‘educate the pupil to be his own educator;’ or, ‘educate
the pupil so that it will become better than its educator.’ (Hermann and
Dorothea, Hector and Astyanax in the Iliad). Such and similar attempts to
fix the purpose of education are abundant in the history of pedagogy; but
they do not bring us nearer the goal. In their formal character they do not
say, for example, of what kind the independence shall be, what content it
shall have, what aims it shall have in view, or in what directions its course
shall lie. For the pupil that has become independent can use his freedom
rightly for good just as well as misuse it for evil.”
Herbart’s own theory of education, so far as we may venture to
formulate it, is strictly ethical as opposed to intellectual, that is, the
development and sustenance of the intellect is of secondary importance to
the educator for two reasons: character building is the matter of first
importance to human beings; and this because, (a) train character and
intellectual “development” largely takes care of itself, and (b) the lessons
designed for intellectual culture have high ethical value, whether
stimulating or disciplinary. This is familiar ground to us: we too have

taught, in season and out of season, that the formation of character is the
aim of the educator. So far, we are at one with the philosopher; but, may we
venture to say it, we have arrived, through the study of Physiology, at the
definiteness of aim which he desires but does not reach. We must appeal, he
says, to Psychology, but then, he adds, “of course we cannot expect a
concordant answer from all psychologists; and in view of the obscurity
which still prevails in this sphere, the different views as to the nature of the
human soul and the extraordinary difficulty with which the empirical
method of investigation meets, an absolutely indubitable explanation can
hardly be expected.”
This is doubtless true of Psychology alone, but of Psychology
illuminated by Physiology we have another tale to tell. It is the study of that
border-land betwixt mind and matter, the brain, which yields the richest
results to the educator. For the brain is the seat of habit: the culture of habit
is, to a certain extent, physical culture: the discipline of habit is at least a
third part of the great whole which we call education, and here we feel that
the physical science of to-day has placed us far in advance of the great
philosopher of fifty years ago. We hold with him entirely as to the
importance of great formative ideas in the education of children, but, we
add to our ideas, habits, and we labour to form habits upon a physical basis.
Character is the result not merely of the great ideas which are given to us,
but of the habits which we labour to form upon those ideas. We recognise
both principles and the result is a wide range of possibilities in education,
practical methods, and a definite aim. We labour to produce a human being
at his best physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually, with the
enthusiasms of religion, the good life, of nature, of knowledge, of art and of
manual work; and we do not labour in the dark.

FOOTNOTES:
[16] Sonnenschein & Co., 3s.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TEACHING OF THE “PARENTS’ NATIONAL
EDUCATIONAL UNION”

Part I

One of Mr. Matthew Arnold’s discriminating utterances may help us in the
effort to define anew the scope and the methods of education. In “A French
Eton” (page 61) he says:—“The education of each class in society has, or
ought to have, its ideal, determined by the wants of that class, and by its
destination. Society may be imagined so uniform that one education shall
be suitable for all its members; we have not a society of that kind, nor has
any European country.... Looking at English society at this moment, one
may say that the ideal for the education of each of its classes to follow, the
aim which the education of each should particularly endeavour to reach, is
different.”
This remark helps us to define our position. We lay no claim to original
ideas or methods. We cannot choose but profit by the work of the great
educators. Such men as Locke and Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, have
left us an inheritance of educational thought which we must needs enter
upon.
Our work is selective, but not merely so. We are progressive. We take
what former thinkers have left us, and go on from there.
For example, in this matter of class differentiation, we believe we have
scientific grounds for a line of our own. The Fathers (why should we not
have Fathers in education as well as in theology?) worked out, for the most
part, their educational thought with an immediate view to the children of the
poor. Because the children that he had to deal with had a limited
vocabulary, and untrained observing powers, Pestalozzi taught them to see

and then to say: “I see a hole in the carpet. I see a small hole in the carpet. I
see a small round hole in the carpet. I see a small round hole with a black
edge in the carpet,” and so on; and it is very easy to see how good such
training would be for such children. But what is the case with the children
we have to deal with? We believe to-day on scientific grounds in the
doctrine of heredity, and certainly in this matter experience supports our
faith.
Punch has hit off the state of the case: “Come and see the puff-puff,
dear.” “Do you mean the locomotive, grandmamma?” As a matter of fact,
the child of four and five has a wider, more exact vocabulary in everyday
use, than that employed by his elders and betters, and is constantly adding
to this vocabulary with surprising quickness; ergo, to give a child of this
class a vocabulary is no part of direct education. Again, we know that
nothing escapes the keen scrutiny of the little people. It is not their
perceptive powers we have to train, but the habit of methodical observation
and accurate record.
Generations of physical toil do not tend to foster imagination. How
good, then, for the children of the working classes to have games initiated
for them, to be carried through little dramatic plays until, perhaps, in the
end they will be able to invent such little dramas for themselves!
But the children of the cultured classes—why, surely their danger is
rather to live too much in realms of fancy. A single sentence in lesson or
talk, the slightest sketch of an historical character, and they will play at it
for a week, inventing endless incidents. Like Tennyson, when he was a
child, they will carry on the story of the siege and defence of a castle
(represented by a mound, with sticks for its garrison) for weeks together,
and a child engrossed with these larger interests feels a sensible loss of
dignity when he flaps his wings as a pigeon or skips about as a lamb,
though, no doubt, he will do these things with pleasure for the teacher he
loves. Imagination is ravenous for food, not pining for culture, in the
children of educated parents, and education need not concern herself
directly, for them, with the development of the conceptive powers. Then
with regard to the cultivated child’s reasoning powers, most parents have
had experiences of this kind—Tommy is five. His mother had occasion to
talk to him about the Atlantic Cable, and said she did not know how it was
insulated; Tommy remarked next morning that he had been thinking about

it, and perhaps the water itself was an insulator. So far from needing to
develop their children’s reasoning powers, most parents say—“Oh, wad the
gods the giftie gie us”—to answer the everlasting ‘why’ of the intelligent
child.
In a word, to develop the child’s so-called faculties is the main work of
education when ignorant or otherwise deficient children are concerned; but
the children of educated people are never ignorant in this sense. They
awake to the world all agog for knowledge, and with keen-edged faculties;
therefore the principle of heredity causes us to recast our idea of the office
of education, and to recognise that the child of intelligent parents is born
with an inheritance of self-developing faculties.
Thus education naturally divides itself into education for the children of
lettered, and education for the children of unlettered parents. In fact, this
class question, which we are all anxious to evade in common life, comes
practically into force in education. It is absolutely necessary to individualise
and say, this part of education is the most important for this child, or this
class, but may be relegated into a lower place for another child or another
class.
If science limits our range of work as regards the development of so-
called faculties, it extends it in equal measure with regard to habit. Here we
have no new doctrine to proclaim. “One custom overcometh another,” said
Thomas à Kempis, and that is all we have to say; only physiologists have
made clear to us the rationale of this law of habit. We know that to form in
his child right habits of thinking and behaving is a parent’s chief duty, and
that this can be done for every child definitely and within given limits of
time. But this question has been already dealt with, and we need do no more
than remind parents of what they already know.
To nourish a child daily with loving, right, and noble ideas we believe to
be the parent’s next duty. The child having once received the Idea will
assimilate it in his own way, and work it into the fabric of his life; and a
single sentence from his mother’s lips may give him a bent that will make
him, or may tend to make him, painter or poet, statesman or philanthropist.
The object of lessons should be in the main twofold: to train a child in
certain mental habits, as attention, accuracy, promptness, &c., and to
nourish him with ideas which may bear fruit in his life.

There are other educational principles which we bear in mind and work
out, but for the moment it is worth while for us to concentrate our thought
upon the fact that one of our objects is to accentuate the importance of
education under the two heads of the formation of habits and the
presentation of ideas, and as a corollary to recognise that the development
of faculties is not a supreme object with the cultivated classes, because this
is work which has been done for their children in a former generation.
But how does all this work? Is it practical? Is it the question of to-day? It
must needs be practical because it gives the fullest recognition to the two
principles of human nature, the material, and the spiritual. We are ready to
concede all that the most advanced biologist would ask of us. Does he say,
“Thought is only a mode of motion?” if so, we are not dismayed. We know
that ninety-nine out of a hundred thoughts that pass through our minds are
involuntary, the inevitable result of those modifications of the brain tissue
which habit has set up. The mean man thinks mean thoughts, the
magnanimous man great thoughts, because we all think as we are
accustomed to think, and Physiology shows us why. On the other hand, we
recognise that greater is the spirit within us than the matter which it
governs. Every habit has its beginning. The beginning is the idea which
comes with a stir and takes possession of us. The idea is the motive power
of life, and it is because we recognise the spiritual potency of the idea that
we are able to bow reverently before the fact that God the Holy Spirit is
Himself the Supreme Educator, dealing with each of us severally in the
things we call sacred and those we call secular. We lay ourselves open to the
spiritual impact of ideas whether these be conveyed by the printed page, the
human voice, or whether they reach us without visible sign.
But ideas may be evil or may be good; and to choose between the ideas
that present themselves is, as we have been taught, the one responsible
work of a human being. It is the power of choice that we would give our
children. We ask ourselves “Is there any fruitful idea underlying this or that
study that the children are engaged in?” We divest ourselves of the notion
that to develop the faculties is the chief thing, and a “subject” which does
not rise out of some great thought of life we usually reject as not
nourishing, not fruitful; while we usually, but not invariably, retain those
studies which give exercise in habits of clear and orderly thinking. We have
some gymnastics of the mind whose object is to exercise what we call

faculties as well as to train in the habit of clear and ordered thinking.
Mathematics, grammar, logic, &c., are not purely disciplinary; they do
develop, if a bull may be allowed us, intellectual muscle. We by no means
reject the familiar staples of education, in the school sense, but we prize
them even more for the record of intellectual habits they leave in the brain
tissue than for their distinct value in developing certain “faculties.” Thus
our first thought with regard to Nature-knowledge is that the child should
have a living personal acquaintance with the things he sees. It concerns us
more that he should know bistort from persicaria, hawkweed from
dandelion, and where to find this and that, and how it looks, living and
growing, than that he should talk learnedly about epigynous and
hypogynous. All this is well in its place, but should come quite late, after the
child has seen and studied the living growing thing in situ, and has copied
colour and gesture as best he can.
So of object lessons, we are not anxious to develop his observing powers
on little bits of everything which he shall describe as opaque, brittle,
malleable, and so on. We would prefer not to take the edge off his curiosity
in this way; we should rather leave him receptive and respectful for one of
those opportunities for asking questions and engaging in talk with his
parents about the lock in the river, the mowing machine, the ploughed field,
which offer real seed to the mind of a child, and never make him a priggish
little person able to tell all about it.
Once more, we know that there is a storehouse of thought wherein we
may find all the great ideas that have moved the world. We are above all
things anxious to give the child the key to this storehouse.
The education of the day, it is said, does not produce reading people. We
are determined that the children shall love books, therefore we do not
interpose ourselves between the book and the child. We read him his
Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch, not trying too
much to break up or water down, but leaving the child’s mind to deal with
the matter as it can. We endeavour that all our teaching and treatment of
children shall be on the lines of nature, their nature and ours, for we do not
recognise what is called “Child-nature.” We believe that children are human
beings at their best and sweetest but also at their weakest and least wise. We
are careful not to water down life for them but to present such portions to
them in such quantities as they can readily receive. In a word we are very

tenacious of the dignity and individuality of our children. We recognise
steady, regular growth with no transition stage. This teaching is up to date,
but it is as old as common sense. Our claim is that our common sense rests
on a basis of Physiology, that we show a reason for all that we do, and that
we recognise “the science of the proportion of things,” put the first thing
foremost, do not take too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope
for the workings of nature and of a higher Power than nature herself.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TEACHING OF THE PARENTS’ NATIONAL
EDUCATIONAL UNION

Part II

As the philosophy which underlies any educational or social scheme is
really the vital part of that scheme, it may be well to set forth, however
meagrely, some fragments of P.N.E.U. Philosophy.
We believe—
That disposition, intellect, genius, come pretty much by nature.
That character is an achievement, the one practical achievement
possible to us for ourselves and for our children.
That all real advance, in family or individual, or nation, is along the lines
of character.
That, therefore, to direct and assist the evolution of character is the chief
office of education.
But perhaps we shall clear the ground better by throwing a little of the
teaching of the Union into categorical form:—
What is character?
The resultant or residuum of conduct.
That is to say, a man is what he has made himself by the thoughts in
which he has allowed himself, the words he has spoken, the deeds he has
done.
How does conduct itself originate?

Commonly, in our habitual modes of thought. We think as we are
accustomed to think, and, therefore, act as we are accustomed to act.
What, again, is the origin of these habits of thought and act?
Commonly, inherited disposition. The man who is generous, obstinate,
hot-tempered, devout, is so, on the whole, because that strain of character
runs in his family.
Are there any means of modifying inherited dispositions?
Yes; marriage, for the race; education, for the individual.
How may a bad habit which has its rise in an inherited disposition be
corrected?
By the contrary good habit: as Thomas à Kempis has said, “One custom
overcometh another.”
Trace the genesis of a habit.
Every act proceeds from a thought. Every thought modifies somewhat
the material structure of the brain. That is, the nerve substance of the brain
forms itself to the manner of thoughts we think. The habit of act arises from
the habit of thought. The person who thinks, “Oh, it will do;” “Oh, it
doesn’t matter,” forms a habit of negligent and imperfect work.
How may such habit be corrected?
By introducing the contrary line of thought, which will lead to contrary
action. “This must be done well, because——”
Is it enough to think such thought once?
No; the stimulus of the new idea must be applied until it is, so to speak,
at home in the brain, and arises involuntarily.
What do you mean by involuntary thought?
The brain is at work unceasingly, is always thinking, or rather is always
being acted upon by thought, as the keys of an instrument by the fingers of
a player.
Is the person aware of all the thoughts that the brain elaborates?

No; only of those which are new and “striking.” The old familiar “way
of thinking” beats in the brain without the consciousness of the thinker.
What name is given to this unconscious thought?
Unconscious (or involuntary) cerebration.
Why is it important to the educator?
Because most of our actions spring from thoughts of which we are not
conscious, or, anyway, which are involuntary.
Is there any means of altering the trend of unconscious cerebration?
Yes; by diverting it into a new channel.
The “unconscious cerebration” of the greedy child runs upon cakes and
sweetmeats: how may this be corrected?
By introducing a new idea—the pleasure of giving pleasure with these
good things, for example.
Is the greedy child capable of receiving such new idea?
Most certainly; because benevolence, the desire of benefiting others, is
one of those springs of action in every human being that need only to be
touched to make them act.
Give an example of this fact.
Mungo Park, dying of thirst, hunger, and weariness in an African desert,
found himself in the vicinity of a cannibal tribe. He gave himself up for
lost, but a woman of the tribe found him, took compassion on him, brought
him milk, hid him, and nourished him until he was restored and could take
care of himself.
Are there any other springs of action which may be touched with effect
in every human being?
Yes, such as the desire of knowledge, of society, of distinction, of
wealth; friendship, gratitude, and many more. Indeed, it is not possible to
incite a human being to any sort of good and noble conduct but you touch a
responsive spring.
How, then, can human beings do amiss?

Because the good feelings have their opposite bad feelings, springs
which also await a touch. Malevolence is opposed to benevolence. It is easy
to imagine that the unstable savage woman might have been amongst the
first to devour the man she cherished, had one of her tribe given an impulse
to the springs of hatred within her.
In view of these internal impulses, what is the duty of the educator?
To make himself acquainted with the springs of action in a human being,
and to touch them with such wisdom, tenderness and moderation that the
child is insensibly led into the habits of the good life.
Name some of these habits.
Diligence, reverence, gentleness, truthfulness, promptness, neatness,
courtesy; in fact, the virtues and graces which belong to persons who have
been “well brought up.”
Is it enough to stimulate a spring of action—say, curiosity, or the desire
of knowledge, once in order to secure a habit?
No; the stimulus must be repeated, and action upon it secured over and
over many times before a habit is formed.
What common error do people make about the formation of habits?
They allow lapses; they train a child to “shut the door after him” twenty
times, and allow him to leave it open the twenty-first.
With what result?
That the work has to be done over again, because the growth of brain
tissue to the new habit (the forming of cell-connections) has been disturbed.
The result would appear to be much the same as when the flesh-forming
process which knits up a wound is disturbed.
Then the educator should “time” himself in forming habits? How long
may it take to cure a bad habit, and form the contrary good one?
Perhaps a month or six weeks of careful incessant treatment may be
enough.
But such treatment requires an impossible amount of care and
watchfulness on the part of the educator?

Yes; but not more than is given to the cure of any bodily disease—
measles, or scarlet fever, for example.
Then the thoughts and actions of a human being may be regulated
mechanically, so to speak, by setting up the right nerve currents in the
brain?
This is true only so far as it is true to say that the keys of a piano produce
music.
But the thoughts, which may be represented by the fingers of the player,
do they not also run their course without the consciousness of the thinker?
They do; not merely vague, inconsequent musings, but thoughts which
follow each other with more or less logical sequence, according to the
previous training of the thinker.
Would you illustrate this?
Mathematicians have been known to think out abstruse problems in their
sleep; the bard improvises, authors “reel off” without premeditation,
without any deliberate intention to write such and such things. The thoughts
follow each other according to the habit of thinking previously set up in the
brain of the thinker.
Is it that the thoughts go round and round a subject like a horse in a mill?
No; the horse is rather drawing a carriage along the same high road, but
into ever new developments of the landscape.
In this light, the important thing is how you begin to think on any
subject?
Precisely so; the initial thought or suggestion touches as it were the
spring which sets in motion a possibly endless succession or train of ideas;
thoughts which are, so to speak, elaborated in the brain almost without the
consciousness of the thinker.
Are these thoughts, or successive ideas, random, or do they make for any
conclusion?
They make for the logical conclusion which should follow the initial
idea.

Then the reasoning power may be set to work involuntarily?
Yes; the sole concern of this power is, apparently, to work out the
rational conclusion from any idea presented to it.
But surely this power of arriving at logical rational conclusions almost
unconsciously is the result of education, most likely of generations of
culture?
It exists in greater or less degree according as it is disciplined and
exercised; but it is by no means the result of education as the word is
commonly understood: witness the following anecdote:[17]
“When Captain Head was travelling across the Pampas of South
America, his guide one day suddenly stopped him, and, pointing high into
the air, cried out, ‘A lion!’ Surprised at such an exclamation, accompanied
with such an act, he turned up his eyes, and with difficulty perceived, at an
immeasurable height, a flight of condors soaring in circles in a particular
spot. Beneath this spot, far out of sight of himself or guide, lay the carcass
of a horse, and over this carcass stood, as the guide well knew, a lion, whom
the condors were eyeing with envy from their airy height. The sight of the
birds was to him what the sight of the lion alone would have been to the
traveller, a full assurance of its existence. Here was an act of thought which
cost the thinker no trouble, which was as easy to him as to cast his eyes
upward, yet which from us, unaccustomed to the subject, would require
many steps and some labour.”
Then is what is called “the reason” innate in human beings?
Yes, it is innate, and is exercised without volition by all, but gains in
power and precision, according as it is cultivated.
If the reason, especially the trained reason, arrives at the right conclusion
without any effort of volition on the part of the thinker, it is practically an
infallible guide to conduct?
On the contrary, the reason is pledged to pursue a suggestion to its
logical conclusion only. Much of the history of religious persecutions and
of family and international feuds turns on the confusion which exists in
most minds between that which is logically inevitable and that which is
morally right.

But according to this doctrine any theory whatever may be shown to be
logically inevitable?
Exactly so; the initial idea once received, the difficulty is, not to prove
that it is tenable, but to restrain the mind from proving that it is so.
Can you illustrate this point?
The child who lets himself be jealous of his brother is almost startled by
the flood of convincing proofs that he does well to be angry, which rush in
upon him. Beginning with a mere flash of suspicion in the morning, the
little Cain finds himself in the evening possessed of irrefragable proofs that
his brother is unjustly preferred to him: and
“All seems infected that the infected spy
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.”

But supposing it is true that the child has cause for jealousy?
Given, the starting idea, and his reason is equally capable of proving a
logical certainty, whether it is true or whether it is not true.
Is there any historical proof of this startling theory?
Perhaps every failure in conduct, in individuals, and in nations, is due to
the confusion which exists as to that which is logically right, as established
by the reason, and that which is morally right, as established by external
law.
Is any such distinction recognised in the Bible?
Distinctly so; the transgressors of the Bible are those who do that which
is right in their own eyes—that is, that of which their reason approves.
Modern thought considers, on the contrary, that all men are justified in
doing that which is right in their own eyes, acting “up to their lights,”
“obeying the dictates of their reason.”
For example?
A mother whose cruel usage had caused the death of her child was
morally exonerated lately in a court of justice because she acted “from a
mistaken sense of duty.”
But it is not possible to err from a mistaken sense of duty?

Not only possible, but inevitable, if a man accept his “own reason” as his
lawgiver and judge. Take a test case, the case of the superlative crime that
has been done upon the earth. There can be no doubt that the persons who
caused the death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ acted under a
mistaken sense of duty. “It is expedient that one man die for the people, and
that the whole nation perish not,” said, most reasonably, those patriotic
leaders of the Jews; and they relentlessly hunted to death this Man whose
ascendency over the common people and whose whispered claims to
kingship were full of elements of danger to the subject race. “They know
not what they do,” He said, Who is the Truth.
All this may be of importance to philosophers; but what has it to do with
the bringing up of children?
It is time we reverted to the teaching of Socrates. “Know thyself,”
exhorted the wise man, in season and out of season; and it will be well with
us when we understand that to acquaint a child with himself—what he is as
a human being—is a great part of education.
It is difficult to see why; surely much harm comes of morbid
introspection?
Introspection is morbid or diseased when the person imagines that all
which he finds within him is peculiar to him as an individual. To know what
is common to all men is a sound cure for unhealthy self-contemplation.
How does it work?
To recognise the limitations of the reason is a safeguard in all the duties
and relations of life. The man who knows that loyalty is his first duty in
every relation, and that if he admit doubting, grudging, unlovely thoughts,
he cannot possibly be loyal, because such thoughts once admitted will
prove themselves to be right and fill the whole field of thought, why, he is
on his guard, and writes up “no admittance” to every manner of mistrustful
fancy.
That rule of life should affect the Supreme relationship?
Truly, yes; if a man will admit no beginning of mistrustful surmise
concerning his father and mother, his child and his wife, shall he do so of
Him who is more than they, and more than all, the “Lord of his heart”?

“Loyalty forbids” is the answer to every questioning of His truth that would
intrude.
But when others, whom you must needs revere, question and tell you of
their “honest doubt”?
You know the history of their doubt, and can take it for what it is worth
—its origin in the suggestion, which, once admitted, must needs reach a
logical conclusion even to the bitter end. “Take heed that ye enter not into
temptation,” He said, Who needed not that any should tell Him, for He
knew what was in men.
If man is the creature of those habits he forms with care or allows in
negligence, if his very thoughts are involuntary and his conclusions
inevitable, he ceases to be a free agent. One might as well concede at once
that “thought is a mode of motion,” and cease to regard man as a spiritual
being capable of self-regulation!
It is hardly possible to concede too wide a field to biological research, if
we keep well to the front the fact, that man is a spiritual being whose
material organs act in obedience to spiritual suggestion; that, for example,
as the hand writes, so the brain thinks, in obedience to suggestions.
Is the suggestion self originated?
Probably not; it would appear that, as the material life is sustained upon
its appropriate food from without, so the immaterial life is sustained upon
its food,—ideas or suggestions spiritually conveyed.
May the words “idea” and “suggestion” be used as synonymous terms?
Only in so far as that ideas convey suggestions to be effected in acts.
What part does the man himself play in the reception of this immaterial
food?
It is as though one stood on the threshold to admit or reject the viands
which should sustain the family.
Is this free-will in the reception or rejection of ideas the limit of man’s
responsibility in the conduct of his life?
Probably it is; for an idea once received must run its course, unless it be
superseded by another idea, in the reception of which volition is again

exercised.
How do ideas originate?
They appear to be spiritual emanations from spiritual beings; thus, one
man conveys to another the idea which is a very part of himself.
Is the intervention of a bodily presence necessary for the transmission of
an idea?
By no means; ideas may be conveyed through picture or printed page;
absent friends would appear to communicate ideas without the intervention
of means; natural objects convey ideas, but, perhaps, the initial idea in this
case may always be traced to another mind.
Then the spiritual sustenance of ideas is derived directly or indirectly
from other human beings?
No; and here is the great recognition which the educator is called upon
to make. God, the Holy Spirit, is Himself the supreme Educator of
mankind.
How?
He openeth man’s ear morning by morning, to hear so much of the best
as the man is able to bear.
Are the ideas suggested by the Holy Spirit confined to the sphere of the
religious life?
No; Coleridge, speaking of Columbus and the discovery of America,
ascribes the origin of great inventions and discoveries to the fact that
“certain ideas of the natural world are presented to minds, already prepared
to receive them, by a higher Power than Nature herself.”
Is there any teaching in the Bible to support this view?
Yes; very much. Isaiah, for example, says that the ploughman knows
how to carry on the successive operations of husbandry, “for his God doth
instruct him and doth teach him.”
Are all ideas which have a purely spiritual origin ideas of good?
Unhappily, no; it is the sad experience of mankind that suggestions of
evil also are spiritually conveyed.

What is the part of the man?
To choose the good and refuse the evil.
Does this doctrine of ideas as the spiritual food needful to sustain the
immaterial life throw any light on the doctrines of the Christian religion?
Yes; the Bread of Life, the Water of Life, the Word by which man lives,
the “meat to eat which ye know not of,” and much more, cease to be
figurative expressions, except that we must use the same words to name the
corporeal and the incorporeal sustenance of man. We understand, moreover,
how suggestions emanating from our Lord and Saviour, which are of His
essence, are the spiritual meat and drink of His believing people. We find it
no longer a “hard saying,” nor a dark saying, that we must sustain our
spiritual selves upon Him, even as our bodies upon bread.
What practical bearing upon the educator has this doctrine of ideas?
He knows that it is his part to place before the child daily nourishment of
ideas; that he may give the child the right initial idea in every study, and
respecting each relation and duty of life; above all, he recognises the divine
co-operation in the direction, teaching, and training of the child.
How would you summarise the functions of education?
Education is a discipline—that is, the discipline of the good habits in
which the child is trained. Education is a life, nourished upon ideas; and
education is an atmosphere—that is, the child breathes the atmosphere
emanating from his parents; that of the ideas which rule their own lives.
What part do lessons and the general work of the schoolroom play in
education thus regarded?
They should afford opportunity for the discipline of many good habits,
and should convey to the child such initial ideas of interest in his various
studies as to make the pursuit of knowledge on those lines an object in life
and a delight to him.
What duty lies upon parents and others who regard education thus
seriously, as a lever by means of which character may be elevated, almost
indefinitely?

Perhaps it is incumbent upon them to make conscientious endeavours to
further all means used to spread the views they hold; believing that there is
such “progress in character and virtue” possible to the redeemed human
race as has not yet been realised, or even imagined. “Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”[18]

FOOTNOTES:
[17] From Archbishop Thompson’s Laws of Thought.
[18] Matthew Arnold.

CHAPTER XXIV

WHENCE AND WHITHER

Part I

“The P.N.E.U. goes on,” an observer writes, “without puff or fuss, by its
own inherent force;” and it is making singularly rapid progress. At the
present moment not less than ten thousand children of thinking, educated
parents, are being brought up, more or less consciously and definitely, upon
the line of the Union. Parents who read the Parents’ Review, or other
literature of the Society, parents who belong to our various branches, or our
other agencies, parents who are influenced by these parents, are becoming
multitudinous; and all have one note in common,—the ardour of persons
working out inspiring ideas.
It is hardly possible to over-estimate the force of this league of educated
parents. When we think of the part that the children being brought up under
these influences will one day play in the leading and ruling of the land, we
are solemnised with the sense of a great responsibility, and it behoves us to
put to ourselves, once again, the two searching queries by which every
movement should, from time to time, be adjudged,—Whence? and
Whither?
Whence? The man who is satisfied with his dwelling-place has no wish
to move, and the mere fact of a “movement” is a declaration that we are not
satisfied, and that we are definitely on our way to some other ends than
those commonly accepted. In one respect only we venture boldly to hark
back. Exceedingly fine men and women were brought up by our
grandfathers and grandmothers, even by our mothers and fathers, and the
wise and old amongst us, though they look on with great sympathy, yet
have an unexpressed feeling that men and women were made on the old
lines of a stamp which we shall find it hard to improve upon. This was no

mere chance result, nor did it come out of the spelling-book or the
Pinnock’s Catechisms which we have long ago consigned to the limbo they
deserve.
The teaching of the old days was as bad as it could be, the training was
haphazard work, reckless alike of physiology and psychology; but our
grandfathers and grandmothers had one saving principle, which, for the last
two or three decades, we have been, of set purpose, labouring to lose. They,
of the older generation, recognised children as reasonable beings, persons
of mind and conscience like themselves, but needing their guidance and
control, as having neither knowledge nor experience. Witness the queer old
children’s books which have come down to us; before all things, these
addressed children as reasonable, intelligent and responsible (terribly
responsible!) persons. This fairly represents the note of home-life in the last
generation. So soon as the baby realised his surroundings, he found himself
a morally and intellectually responsible person. Now one of the secrets of
power in dealing with our fellow beings is, to understand that human nature
does that which it is expected to do and is that which it is expected to be.
We do not mean, believed to do and to be, with the fond and foolish faith
which Mrs. Hardcastle bestowed on her dear Tony Lumpkin. Expectation
strikes another chord, the chord of “I am, I can, I ought,” which must
vibrate in every human breast, for, “’tis our nature to.” The capable,
dependable men and women whom we all know were reared upon this
principle.
But now? Now, many children in many homes are still brought up on the
old lines, but not with quite the unfaltering certitude of the old times. Other
thoughts are in the air. A baby is a huge oyster (says one eminent
psychologist) whose business is to feed, and to sleep, and to grow. Even
Professor Sully, in his most delightful book,[19] is torn in two. The children
have conquered him, have convinced him beyond doubt that they are as
ourselves, only more so. But then he is an evolutionist, and feels himself
pledged to accommodate the child to the principles of evolution. Therefore,
the little person is supposed to go through a thousand stages of moral and
intellectual development, leading him from the condition of the savage or
ape to that of the intelligent and cultivated human being. If children will not
accommodate themselves pleasantly to this theory, why, that is their fault,
and Professor Sully is too true a child-lover not to give us the children as

they are, with little interludes of the theory upon which they ought to
evolve. Now we have absolutely no theory to advance, and are, on scientific
grounds, disposed to accept the theories of the evolutionary psychologists.
But facts are too strong for us. When we consider the enormous intellectual
labour the infant goes through during his first year in accommodating
himself to the conditions of a new world, in learning to discern between far
and near, solid and flat, large and small, and a thousand other qualifications
and limitations of this perplexing world, why, we are not surprised that John
Stuart Mill should be well on in his Greek at five; that Arnold at three
should know all the Kings and Queens of England by their portraits; or that
a musical baby should have an extensive repertoire of the musical classics.
We were once emphasising the fact that every child could learn to speak
two languages at once with equal facility, when a gentleman in the audience
stated that he had a son who was a missionary in Bagdad, married to a
German lady, and their little son of three expressed all he had to say with
equal fluency in three languages—German, English, and Arabic, using each
in speaking to those persons whose language it was. “Nana, which does
God love best, little girls or little boys?” said a meditative little girl of four.
“Oh, little girls, to be sure,” said Nana, with a good-natured wish to please.
“Then if God loves little girls best, why was not God Himself a little girl?”
Which of us who have reached the later stages of evolution would have hit
upon a more conclusive argument? If the same little girl asked on another
occasion, watching the blackbirds at the cherries: “Nana, if the bees make
honey, do the birds make jam?” it was by no means an inane question, and
only proves that we older persons are dull and inappreciative of such
mysteries of nature as that bees should make honey.
This is how we find children—with intelligence more acute, logic more
keen, observing powers more alert, moral sensibilities more quick, love and
faith and hope more abounding; in fact, in all points like as we are, only
much more so, but absolutely ignorant of the world and its belongings, of us
and our ways, and, above all, of how to control and direct and manifest the
infinite possibilities with which they are born.
Our conception of a child rules our relations towards him. Pour
s’amuser is the rule of child-life proper for the “oyster” theory, and most of
our children’s books and many of our theories of child-education are based
upon this rule. “Oh! he’s so happy,” we say, and are content, believing that

if he is happy he will be good; and it is so to a great extent; but in the older
days the theory was, if you are good you will be happy; and this is a
principle which strikes the keynote of endeavour, and holds good, not only
through the childish “stage of evolution,” but for the whole of life, here and
hereafter. The child who has learned to “endeavour himself” (as the Prayer
Book has it) has learned to live.
If our conception of Whence? as regards the child, as of—
“A Being, breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death,”—

is old, that of our grandfathers; our conception of the aims and methods of
education, is new, only made possible within the very last decades of the
century; because it rests one foot upon the latest advances in the science of
Biology and the other upon the potent secret of these latter days, that matter
is the all-serviceable agent of spirit, and that spirit forms, moulds, is
absolute lord, over matter, as capable of affecting the material convolutions
of the brain as of influencing what used to be called the heart.
Knowing that the brain is the physical seat of habit, and that conduct and
character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow: knowing, too, that
an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and, hence, a new habit of
life; we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with
vitalising ideas as to the relations of life, departments of knowledge,
subjects of thought: and to give deliberate care to the formation of those
habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas.
In this great work we seek and assuredly find the co-operation of the
Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to modern thought,
as the Supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular,
fully as much as in those that have been called sacred. We are free to give
our whole force to these two great educational labours, of the inspiration of
ideas and the formation of habits, because, except in the case of children
somewhat mentally deficient, we do not consider that the “development of
faculties” is any part of our work; seeing that the children’s so-called
faculties are already greatly more acute than our own.
We have, too, in our possession, a test for systems that are brought under
our notice, and can pronounce upon their educational value. For example, a
little while ago, the London Board Schools held an exhibition of work; and

great interest was excited by an exhibit which came from New York
representing a week’s work in a school. The children worked for a week
upon “an apple.” They modelled it in clay, they painted it in brushwork,
they stitched the outline on cardboard, they pricked it, they laid it in sticks
(the pentagonal form of the seed vessel). Older boys and girls modelled an
apple-tree and made a little ladder on which to run up the apple-tree and
gather the apples, and a wheel-barrow to carry the apples away, and a great
deal more of the same kind. Everybody said, “How pretty, how ingenious,
what a good idea!” and went away with the notion that here, at last, was
education. But we ask, “What was the informing idea?” The external shape,
the internal contents of an apple,—matters with which the children were
already exceedingly well acquainted. What mental habitudes were gained
by this week’s work? They certainly learned to look at the apple, but think
how many things they might have got familiar acquaintance with in the
time. Probably the children were not consciously bored, because the
impulse of the teachers enthusiasm carried them on. But, think of it—
“Rabbits hot and rabbits cold,
Rabbits young and rabbits old,
Rabbits tender and rabbits tough,”—

no doubt those children had enough—of apples anyway. This “apple”
course is most instructive to us as emphasising the tendency in the human
mind to accept and rejoice in any neat system which will produce
immediate results, rather than to bring every such little course to the test of
whether it does or does not further either or both of our great educational
principles.
Whither? Our “whence” opens to us a “whither” of infinitely delightful
possibilities. Seeing that each of us is labouring for the advance of the
human race through the individual child we are educating, we consider
carefully in what directions this advance is due, and indicated, and we
proceed of set purpose and, endeavour to educate our children so that they
shall advance with the tide. “Can ye not discern the signs of the times?” A
new Renaissance is coming upon us, of unspeakably higher import than the
last; and we are bringing up our children to lead and guide, and, by every
means help in the progress—progress by leaps and bounds—which the

world is about to make. But “whither” is too large a question for the close
of a chapter.

FOOTNOTES:
[19] “Studies of Childhood,” by Professor Sully (Longmans, 10s. 6d.).

CHAPTER XXV

WHENCE AND WHITHER

Part II

The morphologist, the biologist, leave many without hesitation in following
the great bouleversement of thought, summed up in the term evolution.
They are no longer able to believe otherwise than that man is the issue of
processes, ages long in their development; and what is more, and even more
curious, that each individual child, from the moment of his conception to
that of his birth, appears in his own person to mark an incredible number of
the stages of this evolutionary process. The realisation of this truth has
made a great impression on the minds of men. We feel ourselves to be part
of a process, and to be called upon, at the same time, to assist in the
process, not for ourselves exactly, but for any part of the world upon which
our influence bears; especially for the children who are so peculiarly given
over to us. But there comes, as we have seen, a point where we must arise
and make our protest. The physical evolution of man may admit of no
doubt; the psychical evolution, on the other hand, is not only, not proven,
but the whole weight of existing evidence appears to go into the opposite
scale.
The age of materialism has run its course: we recognise matter as force,
but as altogether subject force, and that it is the spirit of a man which
shapes and uses his material substance, in its own ways to its own ends.
Who can tell the way of the spirit? Perhaps this is one of the ultimate
questions upon which man has not yet been able to speculate to any
purpose; but when we consider the almost unlimited powers of loving and
of trusting, of discriminating and of apprehending, of perceiving and of
knowing, which a child possesses, and compare these with the blunted
sensibilities and slower apprehension of the grown man or woman of the

same calibre, we are certainly not inclined to think that growth from less to
more, and from small to great, is the condition of the spiritual life: that is, of
that part of us which loves and worships, reasons and thinks, learns and
applies knowledge. Rather would it seem to be true of every child in his
degree, as of the divine and typical Child, that He giveth not the Spirit by
measure to him.
It is curious how the philosophy of the Bible is always well in advance
of our latest thought. “He grew in wisdom and in stature,” we are told. Now
what is wisdom—philosophy? Is it not the recognition of relations? First,
we have to understand relations of time and space and matter, the natural
philosophy which made up so much of the wisdom of Solomon; then, by
slow degrees, and more and more, we learn that moral philosophy which
determines our relations of love and justice and duty to each other: later,
perhaps, we investigate the profound and puzzling subject of the inter-
relations of our own most composite being,—mental philosophy. And in all
these and beyond all these we apprehend slowly and feebly the highest
relation of all, the relation to God, which we call religion. In this science of
the relations of things consists what we call wisdom, and wisdom is not
born in any man,—apparently not even in the Son of man Himself. He grew
in wisdom, in the sweet gradual apprehension of all the relations of life: but
the power of apprehending, the strong, subtle, discerning spirit, whose
function it is to grasp and understand, appropriate and use, all the relations
which bind all things to all other things—this was not given to Him by
measure; nor, we may reverently believe, is it so given to us.
That there are differences in the measures of men, in their intellectual
and moral stature, is evident enough; but it is well that we should realise the
nature of these differences, that they are differences in kind and not in
degree; depending upon what we glibly call the laws of heredity, which
bring it to pass that man in his various aspects shall make up that
conceivably perfect whole possible to mankind. This is a quite different
thing from the notion of a small and feeble measure of heart and intellect in
the child, to grow by degrees into the robust and noble spiritual
development which, according to the psychical evolutionist, should
distinguish the adult human being.
These are quite practical and simple considerations for every one
entrusted with the bringing up of a child, and are not to be set aside as

abstract principles, the discussion of which should serve little purpose
beyond that of sharpening the wits of the schoolmen. As a matter of fact, we
do not realise children, we under-estimate them; in the divine words, we
“despise” them, with the best intentions in the world, because we confound
the immaturity of their frames, and their absolute ignorance as to the
relations of things, with spiritual impotence: whereas the fact probably is,
that never is intellectual power so keen, the moral sense so strong, spiritual
perception so piercing, as in those days of childhood which we regard with
a supercilious, if kindly, smile. A child is a person in whom all possibilities
are present—present now at this very moment—not to be educed after years
and efforts manifold on the part of the educator: but indeed it is a greater
thing to direct and use this wealth of spiritual power than to develop the so-
called faculties of the child. It cannot be too strongly urged that our
education of children will depend, nolens volens, upon the conception we
form of them. If we regard them as instruments fit and capable for the
carrying out of the Divine purpose in the progress of the world, we shall
endeavour to discern the signs of the times, perceive in what directions we
are being led, and prepare the children to carry forward the work of the
world, by giving them vitalising ideas concerning, at any rate, some
departments of that work.
Having settled it with ourselves that we and the children alike live for
the advancement of the race, that our work is immediately with them, and,
through them, mediately for all, and that they are perfectly fitted to receive
those ideas which are for the inspiration of life, we must next settle it with
ourselves in what directions we shall set up spiritual activities in the
children.
We have sought to establish our whence in the potency of the child, we
will look for our whither in the living thought of the day, which probably
indicates the directions in which the race is making progress. We find that
all men everywhere are keenly interested in science, that the world waits
and watches for great discoveries; we, too, wait and watch, believing that,
as Coleridge said long ago, great ideas of Nature are imparted to minds
already prepared to receive them by a higher Power than Nature herself.
At a late meeting of the British Association, the President lamented that
the progress of science was greatly hindered by the fact that we no longer
have field naturalists—close observers of Nature as she is. A literary journal

made a lamentable remark thereupon. It is all written in books, said this
journal, so we have no longer any need to go to Nature herself. Now the
knowledge of Nature which we get out of books is not real knowledge; the
use of books is, to help the young student to verify facts he has already seen
for himself. We, of the P.N.E.U., are before all things, Nature-lovers; we
conceive that intimate acquaintance with every natural object within his
reach is the first, and possibly, the best part of a child’s education. For
himself, all his life long, he will be soothed by—
“The breathing balm,
The silence and the calm,
Of mute insensate things.”

And for science, he is in a position to do just the work which is most
needed; he will be a close loving observer of Nature at first hand, storing
facts, and free from all impatient greed for inferences.
Looking out on the realm of Art again, we think we discern the signs of
the times. Some of us begin to learn the lesson which a prophet has been
raised up to deliver to this generation. We begin to understand that mere
technique, however perfect—whether in the rendering of flesh tints, or
marbles, or of a musical composition of extreme difficulty—is not
necessarily high Art. It is beginning to dawn upon us that Art is great only
in proportion to the greatness of the idea that it expresses; while, what we
ask of the execution, the technique, is that it shall be adequate to the
inspiring idea. But surely these high themes have nothing to do with the
bringing up of children? Yes, they have; everything. In the first place, we
shall permit no pseudo Art to live in the same house with our children; next,
we shall bring our own facile tastes and opinions to some such searching
test as we have indicated, knowing that the children imbibe the thoughts
that are in us, whether we will or no; and, lastly, we shall inspire our
children with those great ideas which shall create a demand, anyway, for
great Art.
In literature, we have definite ends in view, both for our own children,
and for the world through them. We wish the children to grow up to find joy
and refreshment in the taste, the flavour of a book. We do not mean by a
book any printed matter in a binding, but a work possessing certain literary
qualities able to bring that sensible delight to the reader which belongs to a
literary word fitly spoken. It is a sad fact that we are losing our joy in

literary form. We are in such haste to be instructed by facts or titillated by
theories, that we have no leisure to linger over the mere putting of a
thought. But this is our error, for words are mighty both to delight and to
inspire. If we were not as blind as bats, we should long ago have discovered
a truth very fully indicated in the Bible—that that which is once said with
perfect fitness can never be said again, and becomes ever thereafter a living
power in the world. But in literature, as in art, we require more than mere
form. Great ideas are brooding over the chaos of our thought; and it is he
who shall say the things we are all dumbly thinking, who shall be to us as a
teacher sent from God.
For the children? They must grow up upon the best. There must never be
a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or
reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy
thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake’s “Songs of
Innocence” represent their standard in poetry; Defoe and Stevenson, in
prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature, that
is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life.
Perhaps a printed form to the effect that gifts of books to the children will
not be welcome in such and such a family, would greatly assist in this
endeavour!
To instance one more point—there is a reaching out in all directions after
the conception expressed in the words “solidarity of the race.” We have
probably never before felt as now in absolute relation with all men
everywhere; everything human is precious to us, the past belongs to us as
the present, and we linger tenderly over evidences of the personality of men
and women who lived ages ago. An American poet expresses this feeling
with western intensity, but he does not exaggerate when he tells us that he is
the soldier wounded in battle, he is the galley slave, and he is the hero come
to the rescue, that every human pulse is his pulse, every fall his fall, and
every moral victory his triumph. The present writer recollects the moment
when the conviction of the common sisterhood of women was brought
home to her in a way never to be forgotten. She was driving from station to
station in London, and saw a drunken woman carried on a door. She knew
by the shock of pain and the tears the sight brought that the woman was not
outside of her, but was in some mysterious way part of her—her very self.
This was a new perception to the girl, and one never again to be lost sight

of. Such shocks of recognition probably come to most of us, and when they
come to the Greathearts of the world we get our Elizabeth Frys, our
Wilberforces, our Florence Nightingales. Deeds of pity have been done
through all the Christian ages, and, indeed, wherever the human heart has
had free play, but to feel pity for another and to be aware, however dimly,
that that other is, part and lot, indissolubly bound up with ourselves—these
are two things. We venture to believe that this is the stage which the
education of mankind, as divinely conducted, has reached in our day. In
other days men did good for the love of God, or to save their own souls;
they acted uprightly because it behoved themselves to be just in all their
dealings; but the motives which stir us in our relation to each other now are
more intimate, tender, indefinable, soul-compelling. What the issues will be
when we have learned to con understandingly this new page in the Book of
Life we cannot foretell, but we may hope that the Kingdom of God is
coming upon us.
Studying reverently these signs of the times, what indications do we find
for our guidance in the bringing up of children? The tender sympathy of the
child must be allowed to flow in ways of help and kindness towards all life
that anyway touches his. I once knew a little girl of five, who came in from
her walk under an obvious cloud of distress. “What is the matter, H——?”
she was asked. A quick little “Nothing,” with the reticence of her family,
was all that could be got out of her for some minutes; but a caress broke her
down, and, in a passion of pity, she sobbed out, “A poor man, no home, no
food, no bed to lie upon!” Young as she was, the revelation of the common
life in humanity had come upon her; she was one with the beggar and
suffered with him. Children must, of course, be shielded from such intense
suffering, but woe to mother or nurse who would shield, by systematically
hardening, the child’s heart. This little girl should have had the relief of
helping, and then the pain of sympathy would not have been too much for
her. Whatever our own opinion of the world and of human nature, let us be
careful how we breathe the word “impostor” into the ear of a child, until he
is old enough to understand that if the man is an impostor that does but
make him the object of a deeper pity and a wiser help—a help whose object
is not to relieve but to reform.
Again, children are open to vanity as to all other evil dispositions
possible to human nature. They must be educated to give and to help

without any notion that to do so is goodness on their part. It is very easy to
keep them in the attitude of mind natural to a child, that to serve is
promotion to the person who serves, for indeed he has no absolute claim to
be in a position to pour benefits upon another. The child’s range of
sympathy must be widened, his love must go out to far and near, rich and
poor; distress abroad and distress at home should appeal to him equally; and
always he should give some manner of help at real cost to himself. When he
is old enough, the object lessons of the newspapers should be brought
before him. He should know that atrocities in Armenia, for instance, are the
cause of real heart-trouble in English homes; that there are cases of abstract
right and wrong for nations as for individuals, which admit of no
considerations of expediency; that to succour our neighbour in mortal
distress is such an occasion, and that he who has fallen among thieves is
therefore our neighbour, whether as a nation or as an individual. Do not let
us bring up our children in glass houses, for fear of the ravages of pity upon
their tender hearts. Let them know of any distress which would naturally
come before them, and let them ease their own pain by alleviating in some
way the sufferings they sorrow for. Children were not given to us with
infinite possibilities of love and pity that we might choke the springs of pity
and train them into hardness of heart. It is our part, on the contrary, to
prepare these little ministers of grace for the larger and fuller revelation of
the kingdom of heaven that is coming upon us.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE GREAT RECOGNITION

Mr. Ruskin has done a great service to modern thought in interpreting
for us the harmonious and ennobling scheme of education and philosophy
recorded upon one quarter of what he calls the “Vaulted Book,” that is, the
Spanish Chapel attached to the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, in Florence.
Many of our readers have probably studied under Mr. Ruskin’s guidance
the illuminating teaching of the frescoes which cover roof and walls; but all
will like to be reminded of the lessons they have pondered with reverence
and wonder. “The descent of the Holy Ghost is on the left hand (of the roof)
as you enter. The Madonna and Disciples are gathered in an upper chamber:
underneath are the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, &c., who hear them speak in
their own tongues. Three dogs are in the foreground—their mythic purpose,
to mark the share of the lower animals in the gentleness given by the
outpouring of the Spirit of Christ.... On this and the opposite side of the
Chapel are represented by Simon Memmi’s hand, the teaching power of the
Spirit of God and the saving power of the Christ of God in the world,
according to the understanding of Florence in his time.
“We will take the side of intellect first. Beneath the pouring forth of the
Holy Spirit in the point of the arch beneath are the three Evangelical
Virtues. Without these, says Florence, you can have no science. Without
Love, Faith, and Hope—no intelligence. Under these are the four Cardinal
Virtues ... Temperance, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude. Under these are the
great Prophets and Apostles.... Under the line of Prophets, as powers
summoned by their voices are the mythic figures of the seven theological or
spiritual and the seven geological or natural sciences; and under the feet of
each of them the figure of its Captain-teacher to the world.”
We hope our readers will continue to study Mr. Ruskin’s exposition of
the “Vaulted Book” in Mornings in Florence: it is wonderfully full of

teaching and suggestion. Our immediate concern is with the seven mythic
figures representing the natural sciences, and with the figure of the Captain-
teacher of each. First we have Grammar, a gracious figure teaching three
Florentine children; and, beneath, Priscian. Next, Rhetoric, strong, calm,
and cool; and below, the figure of Cicero with a quite beautiful face. Next,
Logic, with perfect pose of figure and lovely countenance; and beneath her,
Aristotle—intense keenness of search in his half-closed eyes. Next, Music,
with head inclined in intent listening to the sweet and solemn strains she is
producing from her antique instrument; and underneath, Tubal Cain, not
Jubal, as the inventor of harmony—perhaps the most marvellous record that
Art has produced of the impact of a great idea upon the soul of a man but
semi-civilised. Astronomy succeeds, with majestic brow and upraised hand,
and below her, Zoroaster, exceedingly beautiful—“the delicate Persian head
made softer still by the elaborately wreathed silken hair.” Next, Geometry,
looking down, considering some practical problem, with her carpenter’s
square in her hand, and below her, Euclid. And lastly, Arithmetic, holding
two fingers up in the act of calculating, and under her, Pythagoras wrapped
in the science of number.
“The thoughts of God are broader than the measures of man’s mind.”

But here we have the breadth of minds so wide in the sweep of their
intelligence, so profound in their insight, that we are almost startled with
the perception that, pictured on these walls, we have indeed a true measure
of the thoughts of God. Let us glance for a moment at our nineteenth
century conception of education. In the first place, we divide education into
religious and secular. The more devout among us insist upon religious
education as well as secular. Many of us are content to do without religious
education altogether, and are satisfied with what we not only call secular
but make secular, in the sense in which we understand the word, i.e.,
entirely limited to the uses of this visible world. Many Christian people rise
a little higher; they conceive that even grammar and arithmetic may in
some, not very clear, way be used for God; but the Great Recognition, that
God the Holy Spirit is Himself, personally, the Imparter of knowledge, the
Instructor of youth, the Inspirer of genius, is a conception so far lost to us
that we should think it distinctly irreverent to conceive of the divine
teaching as co-operating with ours in a child’s arithmetic lesson, for
example. But the Florentine mind of the Middle Ages went further than this:

it believed, not only that the seven Liberal Arts were fully under the direct
outpouring of the Holy Ghost, but that every fruitful idea, every original
conception, whether in Euclid, or grammar, or music, was a direct
inspiration from the Holy Spirit, without any thought at all as to whether the
person so inspired named himself by the name of God, or recognised
whence his inspiration came. All of these seven figures are those of persons
whom we should roughly class as Pagans, and whom we might be lightly
inclined to consider as outside the pale of the divine inspiration. It is truly
difficult to grasp the amazing boldness of this scheme of the education of
the world which Florence accepted in simple faith.
But we must not accept even an inspiring idea blindly. Were these people
of the Middle Ages right in this plan and conception of theirs? Plato hints at
some such thought in his contention that knowledge and virtue are
fundamentally identical, and that if virtue be divine in its origin, so must
knowledge be also. Ancient Egypt, too, was not in the dark in this matter.
“Pharaoh said unto his servants, can we find such a one as this, a man in
whom the Spirit of God is.” Practical discernment and knowledge of every-
day matters, and of how to deal with emergencies, were not held by this
king of Egypt to be teachings unworthy of the Spirit of God. “The Spirit of
God came upon him and he prophesied among them,” we are told of Saul,
and we may believe that this is the history of every great invention and
every great discovery of the secrets of nature. “Then David gave to
Solomon his son ... the pattern of all that he had by the spirit, of the courts
of the house of the Lord.” We have here a suggestion of the source of every
conception of beauty to be expressed in forms of art. But it is not only with
high themes of science and art that the divine Spirit concerns Himself. It
sometimes occurs to one to wonder who invented, in the first place, the way
of using the most elemental necessaries of life. Who first discovered the
means of producing fire, of joining wood, of smelting ores, of sowing seed,
of grinding corn? We cannot think of ourselves as living without knowing
these things; and yet each one must have been a great idea when it first
made a stir in the mind of the man who conceived it. Where did he get his
first idea? Happily, we are told, in a case so typical that it is a key to all the
rest:—
“Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? Doth he open and break the
clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not

cast abroad the fitches and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal
wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? For his God doth
instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not
threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about
upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the
cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be
threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his
horsemen. This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts, which is
wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.”—Isa. xxviii. 24, &c.
In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical
every-day life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth
instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother’s key to the whole of
the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the divine
Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child.
Because He is infinite, the whole world is not too great a school for this
indefatigable Teacher, and because He is infinite, He is able to give the
whole of His infinite attention for the whole time to each one of His
multitudinous pupils. We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the
infinite nature of our God brings to each of us.
And what subjects are under the direction of this Divine Teacher? The
child’s faith and hope and charity—that we already knew; his temperance,
justice, prudence, and fortitude—that we might have guessed; his grammar,
rhetoric, logic, music, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic—this we might have
forgotten, if these Florentine teachers had not reminded us; his practical
skill in the use of tools and instruments, from a knife and fork to a
microscope, and in the sensible management of all the affairs of life—these
also come from the Lord, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
working. His God doth instruct him and doth teach him. Let the mother
visualise the thought as an illuminated scroll about her new-born child, and
let her never contemplate any kind of instruction for her child, except under
the sense of the divine co-operation. But we must remember that here as
everywhere the infinite and almighty Spirit of God works under limitations.
Our co-operation appears to be the indispensable condition of all the divine
workings. We recognise this in what we call spiritual things, meaning the
things that have to do more especially with our approaches to God; but the
new thing to us is, that grammar, for example, may be taught in such a way

as to invite and obtain the co-operation of the Divine Teacher, or in such a
way as to exclude His illuminating presence from the schoolroom. We do
not mean that spiritual virtues may be exhibited by the teacher and
encouraged in the child in the course of a grammar lesson; this is no doubt
true, and is a point to be remembered; but perhaps the immediate point is
that the teaching of grammar by its guiding ideas and simple principles, the
true, direct, and humble teaching of grammar, without pedantry and without
verbiage, is, we may venture to believe, accompanied by the illuminating
power of the Holy Spirit, of whom is all knowledge. The contrary is equally
true. Such teaching as enwraps a child’s mind in folds of many words,
which his thought is unable to penetrate, which gives him rules, and
definitions, and tables, in lieu of ideas—this is teaching which excludes and
renders impossible the divine co-operation.
This great recognition resolves that discord in our lives of which most of
us are, more or less, aware. The things of sense we are willing to
subordinate to the things of spirit; at any rate, we are willing to endeavour
ourselves in this direction. We mourn over our failures and try again, and
recognise that here lies the Armageddon for every soul of man. But there is
a debateable land. Is it not a fact that the spiritual life is exigeant, demands
our sole interest and concentrated energies? Yet the claims of intellect—
mind, of the æsthetic sense—taste, press upon us urgently. We must think,
we must know, we must rejoice in and create the beautiful. And if all the
burning thoughts that stir in the minds of men, all the beautiful conceptions
they give birth to, are things apart from God, then we, too, must have a
separate life, a life apart from God, a division of ourselves into secular and
religious—discord and unrest. We believe that this is the fertile source of
the unfaith of the day, especially in young and ardent minds. The claims of
intellect are urgent; the intellectual life is a necessity not to be foregone at
any hazard. It is impossible for these to recognise in themselves a dual
nature; a dual spirituality, so to speak; and, if there are claims which
definitely oppose themselves to the claims of intellect, these other claims
must go to the wall; and the young man or woman, full of promise and
power, becomes a free-thinker, an agnostic, what you will. But once the
intimate relation, the relation of Teacher and taught in all things of the mind
and spirit, be fully recognised, our feet are set in a large room; there is
space for free development in all directions; and this free and joyous
development, whether of intellect or heart, is recognised as a Godward

movement. Various activities, with unity of aim, bring harmony and peace
into our lives; more, this perception of the intimate dealings of the divine
Spirit with our spirit in the things of the intellect, as well as in those of the
moral nature, makes us as keenly alive in the one case as in the other to the
insidious promptings of the spirit of evil; we become aware of the
possibility of intellectual sin as of moral sin; we perceive that in the region
of pure reason, also, it behoves us to see that we enter not into temptation.
We rejoice in the expansion of intellect and the expansion of heart and the
ease and freedom of him who is always in touch with the inspiring Teacher,
with Whom are infinite stores of learning, wisdom, and virtue, graciously
placed at our disposal.
Such a recognition of the work of the Holy Spirit as the Educator of
mankind, in things intellectual as well as in things moral and spiritual, gives
us “new thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven,” a sense of harmony in our
efforts and of acceptance of all that we are. What stands between us and the
realisation of this more blessed life? This; that we do not realise ourselves
as spiritual beings invested with bodies,—living, emotional, a snare to us
and a joy to us,—but which are, after all, the mere organs and interpreters
of our spiritual intention. Once we see that we are dealing spirit with spirit
with the friend at whose side we are sitting, with the people who attend to
our needs, we shall be able to realise how incessant is the commerce
between the divine Spirit and our human spirit. It will be to us as when one
stops one’s talk and one’s thoughts in the spring-time, to find the world full
of bird-music unheard the instant before. In like manner, we shall learn to
make pause in our thoughts, and shall hear in our intellectual perplexities,
as well as in our moral, the clear, sweet, cheering and inspiring tones of our
spiritual Guide. We are not speaking here of what is commonly called the
religious life, or of our definite approaches to God in prayer and praise;
these things all Christian people comprehend more or less fully; we are
speaking only of the intellectual life, the development of which in children
is the aim of our subjects and methods of instruction.
Supposing we are willing to make this great recognition, to engage
ourselves to accept and invite the daily, hourly, incessant co-operation of
the divine Spirit, in, to put it definitely and plainly, the schoolroom work of
our children, how must we shape our own conduct to make this co-
operation active, or even possible? We are told that the Spirit is life;

therefore, that which is dead, dry as dust, mere bare bones, can have no
affinity with Him, can do no other than smother and deaden His vitalising
influences. A first condition of this vitalising teaching is that all the thought
we offer to our children shall be living thought; no mere dry summaries of
facts will do; given, the vitalising idea, children will readily hang the mere
facts upon the idea as upon a peg capable of sustaining all that it is needful
to retain. We begin by believing in the children as spiritual beings of
unmeasured powers—intellectual, moral, spiritual—capable of receiving
and constantly enjoying intuitions from, the intimate converse of, the divine
Spirit. With this thought of a child to begin with, we shall perceive that
whatever is stale and flat and dull to us must needs be stale and flat and dull
to him, and also that there is no subject which has not a fresh and living
way of approach. Are we teaching geography? The child discovers with the
explorer, journeys with the traveller, receives impressions new and vivid
from some other mind which is immediately receiving these impressions;
not after they have been made stale and dull by a process of filtering
through many intermediate minds, and, have found at last their way into a
little text-book. Is he learning history? his concern is not with strings of
names and of dates, nor with nice little reading-made-easy stories, brought
down, as we mistakenly say, to the level of his comprehension; we
recognise that his comprehension is at least equal to our own, and that it is
only his ignorance of the attendant circumstances we have to deal with as
luminously as we can. We recognise that history for him is, to live in the
lives of those strong personalities which at any given time impress
themselves most upon their age and country. This is not the sort of thing to
be got out of nice little history books for children, whether “Little Arthur’s,”
or somebody’s “Outlines.” We take the child to the living sources of history
—a child of seven is fully able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch’s own
words (translated), without any diluting and with little explanation. Give
him living thought in this kind, and you make possible the co-operation of
the living Teacher. The child’s progress is by leaps and bounds, and you
wonder why. In teaching music, again, let him once perceive the beautiful
laws of harmony, the personality, so to speak, of Music, looking out upon
him from among the queer little black notes, and the piano lesson has
ceased to be drudgery.
It is unnecessary to go further into details; every subject has its living
way, with what Coleridge calls “its guiding idea” at the head, and it is only

as we discover this living way in each case that a subject of instruction
makes for the education of a child. No neat system is of any use; it is the
very nature of a system to grow stale in the using; every subject, every
division of a subject, every lesson, in fact, must be brought up for
examination before it is offered to the child as to whether it is living, vital,
of a nature to invite the living Intellect of the universe. One more thing is of
vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not
too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it
is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and
luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the
frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation
of the child’s intellectual life. We need not say one word about the necessity
for living thought in the teacher; it is only so far as he is intellectually alive
that he can be effective in the wonderful process which we glibly call
“education.”

CHAPTER XXVII

THE ETERNAL CHILD

“The Waits!
Slowly they play, poor careful souls,
With wistful thoughts of Christmas cheer,
Unwitting how their music rolls
Away the burden of the year.
And with the charm, the homely rune,
Our thoughts like childhood’s thoughts are given,
When all our pulses beat in tune
With all the stars of heaven.”
—John Davidson.

In these levelling days we like to think that everybody has quite equal
opportunities in some direction; but Christmas joy, for example, is not for
every one in like measure. It is not only that those who are in need, sorrow,
or any other adversity do not sit down to the Christmas feast of joy and
thanksgiving; for, indeed, a Benjamin’s portion is often served to the
sorrowful. But it takes the presence of children to help us to realise the idea
of the Eternal Child. The Dayspring is with the children, and we think their
thoughts and are glad in their joy; and every mother knows out of her own
heart’s fulness what the Birth at Bethlehem means. Those of us who have
not children catch echoes. We hear the wondrous story read in church, the
waits chant the tale, the church-bells echo it, and the years that are no more
come back to us, and our hearts are meek and mild, glad and gay, loving
and tender, as those of little children; but, alas, only for the little while
occupied by the passing thought. Too soon the dreariness of daily living
settles down upon us again, and we become a little impatient, do we not, of
the Christmas demand of joyousness.
But it is not so where there are children. The old, old story has all its first
freshness as we tell it to the eager listeners; as we listen to it ourselves with
their vivid interest it becomes as real and fresh to us as it is to them. Hard

thoughts drop away like scales from our eyes; we are young once more with
the children’s young life, which, we are mysteriously made aware, is the life
eternal. What a mystery it is! Does not every mother, made wise unto
salvation, who holds a babe in her arms, feel with tremulous awe that that
deep saying is true for her also, “The same is my mother!” For the little
child is the true St. Christopher, in him is the light and life of Christ; and
every birth is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must
humble ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real
secret of the world’s progress—that every babe comes into the world with
an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents’ hearts. That we,
too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us be as children,
is the message that the new-born child never fails to bear, however little we
heed, or however soon we forget. It is well that parents should ponder these
things, for the child’s estate is a holy one, and it is given to his parents to
safeguard the little heir of blessedness.
It is not possible to enter fully into so large a subject, but it may be worth
while to characterise two or three of the landmarks of this child’s estate; for
how shall we safeguard that which we do not recognise, and how recognise
that to which we have failed to give deliberate attention. The note of
childhood is, before all things, humility. What we call innocence is probably
resolvable into this grace—repellent to the nature of man until he shall
embrace it, and then disclosing itself to him as divine. An old and saintly
writer has a luminous thought on this subject of humility. “There never was,
nor ever will be, but one humility in the whole world, and that is the one
humility of Christ, which never any man, since the fall of Adam, had the
least degree of but from Christ. Humility is one, in the same sense and truth
as Christ is one, the Mediator is one, Redemption is one. There are not two
Lambs of God that take away the sins of the world. But if there was any
humility besides that of Christ, there would be something else besides Him
that could take away the sins of the world.”[20] Now, if there be but one
humility in the whole world, and that humility be the humility of Christ, and
if our Lord pronounces the little child also to be humble, is it not because of
the indwelling divinity, the glory in the child, which we call innocence?
Our common notion of humility is inaccurate. We regard it as a relative
quality. We humble ourselves to this one and that, bow to the prince and
lord it over the peasant. This is why the grace of humility does not

commend itself to us even in our most sincere moods. We feel that this
relative humility is hardly consistent with self-respect and due
independence of character. We have been taught to recognise humility as a
Christian grace, and therefore do not utter our protest; but this
misconception confuses our thought on an important subject. For humility
is absolute, not relative. It is by no means a taking of our place among our
fellows according to a given scale, some being above us by many grades
and others as far below. There is no reference to above or below in the
humble soul, which is equally humble before an infant, a primrose, a worm,
a beggar, a prince.
This, if we think of it, is the state natural to children. Every person and
thing commands their interest; but the person or thing in action is deeply
interesting. “May I go and make mud-pies with the boy in the gutter?”
prays the little prince, discerning no difference at all; and the little boy in
the gutter would meet him with equal frankness. What is the secret of this
absolute humility, humble alike towards higher or lower, and unaware of
distinctions? Our notion of a humble person is one who thinks rather
slightingly of himself, who says, deprecatingly, “Oh, I can’t do this or that,
you know, I’m not clever;” “I’m not cut out for public work of any sort,
I’ve no power or influence;” “Ah! well, I hope he’ll be a better man than his
father, I don’t think much of myself anyway;” “Your children have great
advantages, I wish mine had such a mother, but I’m not a bit wise.” Such
things are often said, in all sincerity, without the least soupçon of the “Uriah
Heap” sentiment. The thing we quarrel with is, that the speakers are apt to
feel that they have, anyway, the saving grace of humility. It is worth while
to reflect that there are no such deprecatory utterances ascribed to the
Example of that “great humility” which we are bound to follow; and if there
is not the slightest evidence of humility in this kind in the divine life, which
was all humility, we must re-cast our notions. Children, too, never make
deprecatory remarks; that is because they are humble, and with the divine
Example before us, and the example of our children, we may receive it that
humility does not consist in thinking little of ourselves. It is a higher
principle, a blessed state, only now and then attained by us elders, but in
which the children perpetually dwell, and in which it is the will of God that
we should keep them.

Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself
at all. It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-
consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person
who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering
for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of
everyday life. This is the quality that makes heroes, and this is the quality
that makes saints. We are able to pray, but we are hardly able to worship or
to praise, to say, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” so long as in the
innermost chamber of our hearts we are self-occupied.
The Christian religion is, in its very nature, objective. It offers for our
worship, reverence, service, adoration and delight, a Divine Person, the
Desire of the world. Simplicity, happiness and expansion come from the
outpouring of a human heart upon that which is altogether worthy. But we
mistake our own needs, are occupied with our own falls and our own
repentances, our manifold states of consciousness. Our religion is subjective
first, and after that, so far as we are able, objective. The order should rather
be objective first, and after that, so far as we have any time or care to think
about ourselves, subjective.
Now the tendency of children is to be altogether objective, not at all
subjective, and perhaps that is why they are said to be first in the kingdom
of heaven. This philosophic distinction is not one which we can put aside as
having no bearing on everyday life. It strikes the keynote for the training of
children. In proportion as our training tends to develop the subjective
principle, it tends to place our children on a lower level of purpose,
character, and usefulness throughout their lives: while so far as we develop
the objective principle, with which the children are born, we make them
capable of love, service, heroism, worship.
It is curious to observe how every function of our most complex nature
may have its subjective or its objective development. The child may eat and
drink and rest with the most absolute disregard of what he is about, his
parents taking care that these things are happily arranged for him, but taking
equal care that his attention shall not be turned to the pleasures of appetite.
But this is a point that we hardly need to dwell upon, as thoughtful parents
are agreed that children’s meals should be so regularly pleasant and various
that the child naturally eats with satisfaction and thinks little or nothing of

what he is eating; that is, parents are careful that, in the matter of food,
children shall not be self-regardful.
Perhaps parents are less fully awake to the importance of regulating a
child’s sensations. We still kiss the place to make it well, make an obvious
fuss if a string is uncomfortable or a crumpled rose-leaf is irritating the
child’s tender skin. We have forgotten the seven Christian virtues and the
seven deadly sins of earlier ages, and do not much consider in the bringing
up of our children whether the grace of fortitude is developing under our
training. Now fortitude has its higher and its lower offices. It concerns itself
with things of the mind and with things of the body, and, perhaps, it is safe
to argue that fortitude on the higher plane is only possible when it has
become the habit of the nature on the lower plane. A baby may be trained in
fortitude, and is much the happier for such training. A child should be
taught that it is beneath him to take any notice of cold or heat, pain or
discomfort. We do not perceive the sensations to which we do not attend,
and it is quite possible to forget even a bad toothache in some new and
vivid interest. Health and happiness depend largely upon the disregard of
sensations, and the child who is encouraged to say, “I’m so cold,” “I’m so
tired,” “My vest pricks me,” and so on, is likely to develop into the
hysterical girl or the hypochondriac man; for it is an immutable law that, as
with our appetites, so with our sensations, in proportion as we attend to
them will they dominate us, until a single sensation of slight pain or
discomfort may occupy our whole field of vision, making us unaware that
there is any joy in living, any beauty in the earth.
But these are the least of the reasons why a child should be trained to put
up with little discomforts and take no notice. The child, who has been
allowed to become self-regardful in the matter of sensations, as of appetites,
has lost his child’s estate, he is no longer humble; he is in the condition of
thinking about himself, instead of that infinitely blessed condition of not
being aware of himself at all. Nor must we permit ourselves to make an
exception to this rule in the case of the poor little invalid. For him, far more
than for the healthy child, it is important that he should be trained to take no
account of his sensations; and many a brave little hero suffers anguish
without conscious thought, and therefore, of course, suffers infinitely less
than if he had been induced to dwell upon his pains. We say, induced,
because though a child may cry with sudden distress, he does not really

think about his aches and pains unless his thoughts be turned to his ailments
by those about him.
We are not advising any Spartan regimen. It is not permitted to us to
inflict hardness in order that the children may learn to endure. Our care is
simply to direct their consciousness from their own sensations. The well-
known anecdote of the man, who, before the days of chloroform, had his
leg cut off without any conscious sensations of pain, because he
determinately kept his mind occupied with other things, is an extreme but
instructive instance of what may be done in this direction. At the same time,
though the child himself be taught to disregard them, his sensations should
be carefully watched by his elders, for they must consider and act upon the
danger signals which the child himself must be taught to disregard. But it is
usually possible to attend to a child’s sensations without letting him know
they have been observed.
This, of the sensations, is only one example of the altruistic or egoistic
direction which the various operations of a child’s complex nature may
receive. His affections, again, are capable of receiving a subjective or
objective direction, according to the suggestions which reach him from
without. Every child comes into the world richly endowed with a well of
love, a fountain of justice; but whether the stream of love shall flow to the
right or the left, whether it shall be egoistic or altruistic, depends on the
child’s earliest training. A child who is taught from the first the delights of
giving and sharing, of loving and bearing, will always spend himself freely
on others, will love and serve, seeking for nothing again; but the child who
recognises that he is the object of constant attention, consideration, love and
service, becomes self-regardful, self-seeking, selfish, almost without his
fault, so strongly is he influenced by the direction his thoughts receive from
those about him. So, too, of that other fountain, of justice, with which every
child is born. There again, the stream may flow forth in either, but not in
both, of the channels, the egoistic or the altruistic. The child’s demand for
justice may be all for himself, or, from the very first, the rights of others
may be kept before his eyes. He may be taught to occupy himself with his
own rights and other people’s duties, and, if he is, his state of mind is easily
discernible by the catch-words often on his lips, “It’s a shame!” “It’s not
fair!” or he may, on the other hand, be so filled with the notion of his own
duties and other people’s rights, that the claims of self slip quietly into the

background. This kind cometh forth only by prayer, but it is well to clear
our thoughts and know definitely what we desire for our children, because
only so can we work intelligently towards the fulfilment of our desire. It is
sad to pray, and frustrate the answer by our own action; but this is, alas, too
possible.
During each coming festival of the Eternal Child, may parents ponder
how best to keep their own children in the blessed child-estate, recollecting
that the humility which Christ commends in the children is what may be
described, philosophically, as the objective principle as opposed to the
subjective, and that, in proportion as a child becomes self-regardful in any
function of his being, he loses the grace of humility. This is the broad
principle; the practical application will need constant watchfulness, and
constant efforts, especially in holiday seasons, to keep friends and visitors
from showing their love for the children in any way that shall tend to
develop self-consciousness.
This, of humility, is not only a counsel of perfection, but is, perhaps, the
highest counsel of perfection; and when we put it to parents, we offer it to
those for whom no endeavour is too difficult, no aim too lofty; to those who
are doing the most to advance the Kingdom of Christ.

FOOTNOTES:
[20] William Law.

BOOK II
ESSAYS IN PRACTICAL EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

THE PHILOSOPHER AT HOME

“He has such a temper, ma’am!”
And there, hot, flurried, and, generally at her wits’ end, stood the poor
nurse at the door of her mistress’s room. The terrific bellowing which filled
the house was enough to account for the maid’s distress. Mrs. Belmont
looked worried. She went up wearily to what she well knew was a weary
task. A quarter of an hour ago life had looked very bright—the sun shining,
sparrows chirping, lilac and laburnum making a gay show in the suburban
gardens about; she thought of her three nestlings in the nursery, and her
heart was like a singing-bird giving out chirps of thanks and praise. But that
was all changed. The outside world was as bright as ever, but she was under
a cloud. She knew too well how those screams from the nursery would spoil
her day.
There the boy lay, beating the ground with fists and feet; emitting one
prodigious roar after another, features convulsed, eyes protruding, in the
unrestrained rage of a wild creature, so transfigured by passion that even his
mother doubted if the noble countenance and lovely smile of her son had
any existence beyond her fond imagination. He eyed his mother askance
through his tumbled, yellow hair, but her presence seemed only to aggravate
the demon in possession. The screams were more violent; the beating of the
ground more than ever like a maniac’s rage.
“Get up, Guy.”
Renewed screams; more violent action of the limbs!
“Did you hear me, Guy?” in tones of enforced calmness.
The uproar subsided a little, but when Mrs. Belmont laid her hand on his
shoulder to raise him, the boy sprang to his feet, ran into her, head-

foremost, like a young bull, kicked her, beat her with his fists, tore her dress
with his teeth, and would no doubt have ended by overthrowing his delicate
mother, but that Mr. Belmont, no longer able to endure the disturbance,
came up in time to disengage the raging child and carry him off to his
mother’s room. Once in, the key was turned upon him, and Guy was left to
“subside at his leisure,” said his father.
Breakfast was not a cheerful meal, either upstairs or down. Nurse was
put out; snapped up little Flo, shook baby for being tiresome, until she had
them both in tears. In the dining-room, Mr. Belmont read the Times with a
frown which last night’s debate did not warrant; sharp words were at his
tongue’s end, but, in turning the paper, he caught sight of his wife’s pale
face and untasted breakfast. He said nothing, but she knew and suffered
under his thoughts fully as much as if they had been uttered. Meantime, two
closed doors and the wide space between the rooms hardly served to dull
the ear-torturing sounds that came from the prisoner.
All at once there was a lull, a sudden and complete cessation of sound.
Was the child in a fit?
“Excuse me a minute, Edward;” and Mrs. Belmont flew upstairs,
followed shortly by her husband. What was her surprise to see Guy with
composed features contemplating himself in the glass! He held in his hand a
proof of his own photograph which had just come from the photographer’s.
The boy had been greatly interested in the process; and here was the picture
arrived, and Guy was solemnly comparing it with that image of himself
which the looking-glass presented.
Nothing more was said on the subject; Mr. Belmont went to the City, and
his wife went about her household affairs with a lighter heart than she had
expected to carry that day. Guy was released, and allowed to return to the
nursery for his breakfast, which his mother found him eating in much
content and with the sweetest face in the world; no more trace of passion
than a June day bears when the sun comes out after a thunderstorm. Guy
was, indeed, delicious; attentive and obedient to Harriet, full of charming
play to amuse the two little ones, and very docile and sweet with his
mother, saying from time to time the quaintest things. You would have
thought he had been trying to make up for the morning’s fracas, had he not
looked quite unconscious of wrong-doing.

This sort of thing had gone on since the child’s infancy. Now, a frantic
outburst of passion, to be so instantly followed by a sweet April-day face
and a sunshiny temper that the resolutions his parents made about punishing
or endeavouring to reform him passed away like hoar-frost before the
child’s genial mood.
A sunshiny day followed this stormy morning; the next day passed in
peace and gladness, but, the next, some hair astray, some crumpled rose-leaf
under him, brought on another of Guy’s furious outbursts. Once again the
same dreary routine was gone through; and, once again, the tempestuous
morning was forgotten in the sunshine of the child’s day.
Not by the father, though: at last, Mr. Belmont was roused to give his
full attention to the mischief which had been going on under his eyes for
nearly the five years of Guy’s short life. It dawned upon him—other people
had seen it for years—that his wife’s nervous headaches and general want
of tone might well be due to this constantly recurring distress. He was a
man of reading and intelligence, in touch with the scientific thought of the
day, and especially interested in what may be called the physical basis of
character,—the interaction which is ever taking place between the material
brain and the immaterial thought and feeling of which it is the organ. He
had even made little observations and experiments, declared to be valuable
by his friend and ally, Dr. Steinbach, the head physician of the county
hospital.
For a whole month he spread crumbs on the window-sill every morning
at five minutes to eight; the birds gathered as punctually, and by eight
o’clock the “table” was cleared and not a crumb remained. So far, the
experiment was a great delight to the children, Guy and Flo, who were all
agog to know how the birds knew the time.
After a month of free breakfasts: “You shall see now whether or no the
birds come because they see the crumbs.” The prospect was delightful, but,
alas! this stage of the experiment was very much otherwise to the pitiful
childish hearts.
“Oh, father, please let us put out crumbs for the poor little birds, they are
so hungry!” a prayer seconded by Mrs. Belmont, met with very ready
acceptance. The best of us have our moments of weakness.

“Very interesting,” said the two savants. “Nothing could show more
clearly the readiness with which a habit is formed in even the less
intelligent of the creatures.”
“Yes, and more than that, it shows the automatic nature of the action
once the habit is formed. Observe, the birds came punctually and regularly
when there were no longer crumbs for them. They did not come, look for
their breakfast, and take sudden flight when it was not there, but they settled
as before, stayed as long as before, and then flew off without any sign of
disappointment. That is, they came, as we set one foot before another in
walking, just out of habit, without any looking for crumbs, or conscious
intention of any sort, a mere automatic or machine-like action with which
conscious thought has nothing to do.”
Of another little experiment Mr. Belmont was especially proud, because
it brought down, as it were, two quarries at a stroke; touched heredity and
automatic action in one little series of observations. Rover, the family dog,
appeared in the first place as a miserable puppy saved from drowning. He
was of no breed to speak of, but care and good living agreed with him. He
developed a handsome shaggy white coat, a quiet, well-featured face, and
betrayed his low origin only by one inveterate habit; carts he took no notice
of, but never a carriage, small or great, appeared in sight but he ran yelping
at the heels of the horses in an intolerable way, contriving at the same time
to dodge the whip like any street Arab. Oddly enough, it came out through
the milkman that Rover came of a mother who met with her death through
this very peccadillo.
Here was an opportunity. The point was, to prove not only that the
barking was automatic, but that the most inveterate habit, even an inherited
habit, is open to cure.
Mr. Belmont devoted himself to the experiment: he gave orders that, for
a month, Rover should go out with no one but himself. Two pairs of ears
were on the alert for wheels; two, distinguished between carriage and cart.
Now Rover was the master of an accomplishment of which he and the
family were proud: he could carry a newspaper in his mouth. Wheels in the
distance, then, “Hi! Rover!” and Rover trotted along, the proud bearer of
the Times. This went on daily for a month, until at last the association
between wheels and newspaper was established, and a distant rumble would

bring him up—a demand in his eyes. Rover was cured. By-and-by the paper
was unnecessary, and “To heel! good dog!” was enough when an ominous
falling of the jaw threatened a return of the old habit.
It is extraordinary how wide is the gap between theory and practice in
most of our lives. “The man who knows the power of habit has a key
wherewith to regulate his own life and the lives of his household, down to
that of the cat sitting at his hearth.” (Applause.) Thus, Mr. Belmont at a
scientific gathering. But only this morning did it dawn upon him that, with
this key between his fingers, he was letting his wife’s health, his child’s life,
be ruined by a habit fatal alike to present peace, and to the hope of manly
self-possession in the future. Poor man! he had a bad half-hour that morning
on his way Citywards. He was not given to introspection, but, when it was
forced upon him, he dealt honestly.
“I must see Steinbach to-night, and talk the whole thing out with him.”

“Ah, so; the dear Guy! And how long is it, do you say, since the boy has
thus out-broken?”
“All his life, for anything I know—certainly it began in his infancy.”
“And do you think, my good friend”—here the Doctor laid a hand on his
friend’s arm, and peered at him with twinkling eyes and gravely set mouth
—“do you think it possible that he has—a—inherited this little weakness?
A grandfather, perhaps?”
“You mean me, I know; yes, it’s a fact. And I got it from my father, and
he, from his. We’re not a good stock. I know I’m an irascible fellow, and it
has stood in my way all through life.”
“Fair and softly, my dear fellow! go not so fast. I cannot let you say bad
things of my best friend. But this I allow; there are thorns, bristles all over;
and they come out at a touch. How much better for you and for Science had
the father cured all that!”
“As I must for Guy! Yes, and how much happier for wife, children, and
servants; how much pleasanter for friends. Well, Guy is the question now.

What do you advise?”
The two sat far into the night discussing a problem on the solution of
which depended the future of a noble boy, the happiness of a family. No
wonder they found the subject so profoundly interesting that two by the
church clock startled them into a hasty separation. Both ladies resented this
dereliction on the part of their several lords. They would have been meeker
than Sarah herself had they known that, not science, not politics, but the
bringing up of the children, was the engrossing topic.

Breakfast-time three days later. Scene, the dining-room.
Nurse in presence of Master and Mistress.
“You have been a faithful servant and good friend, both to us and the
children, Harriet, but we blame you a little for Guy’s passionate outbreaks.
Do not be offended, we blame ourselves more. Your share of blame is that
you have worshipped him from his babyhood, and have allowed him to
have his own way in everything. Now, your part of the cure is, to do exactly
as we desire. At present, I shall only ask you to remember that, Prevention
is better than cure. The thing for all of us is to take precautions against even
one more of these outbreaks.
“Keep your eye upon Guy; if you notice—no matter what the cause—
flushed cheeks, pouting lips, flashing eye, frowning forehead, with two
little upright lines between the eyebrows, limbs held stiffly, hands, perhaps,
closed, head thrown slightly back; if you notice any or all of these signs, the
boy is on the verge of an outbreak. Do not stop to ask questions, or soothe
him, or make peace, or threaten. Change his thoughts. That is the one hope.
Say quite naturally and pleasantly, as if you saw nothing, ‘Your father wants
you to garden with him,’ or, ‘for a game of dominoes;’ or, ‘your mother
wants you to help her in the store-room,’ or, ‘to tidy her work-box.’ Be
ruled by the time of the day, and how you know we are employed. And be
quite sure we do want the boy.”
“But, sir, please excuse me, is it any good to save him from breaking out
when the passion is there in his heart?”
“Yes, Harriet, all the good in the world. Your master thinks that Guy’s
passions have become a habit, and that the way to cure him is to keep him a

long time, a month or two, without a single outbreak; if we can manage
that, the trouble will be over. As for the passion in his heart, that comes with
the outer signs, and both will be cured together. Do, Harriet, like a good
woman, help us in this matter, and your master and I will always be grateful
to you!”
“I’m sure, ma’am,” with a sob (Harriet was a soft-hearted woman, and
was very much touched to be taken thus into the confidence of her master
and mistress). “I’m sure I’ll do my best, especially as I’ve had a hand in it;
but I’m sure I never meant to, and, if I forget, I hope you’ll kindly forgive
me.”
“No, Harriet, you must not forget, any more than you’d forget to snatch
a sharp knife from the baby. This is almost a matter of life and death.”
“Very well, sir; I’ll remember, and thank you for telling me.”

Breakfast-time was unlucky; the very morning after the above talk,
Nurse had her opportunity. Flo, for some inscrutable reason, preferred to eat
her porridge with her brother’s spoon. Behold, quick as a flash, flushed
cheeks, puckered brow, rigid frame!
“Master Guy, dear,” in a quite easy, friendly tone (Harriet had mastered
her lesson), “run down to your father; he wants you to help him in the
garden.”
Instantly the flash in the eye became a sparkle of delight, the rigid limbs
were all active and eager; out of his chair, out of the room, downstairs, by
his father’s side in less time than it takes to tell. And the face—joyous,
sparkling, full of eager expectation—surely Nurse had been mistaken this
time? But no; both parents knew how quickly Guy emerged from the
shadow of a cloud, and they trusted Harriet’s discretion.
“Well, boy, so you’ve come to help me garden? But I’ve not done
breakfast. Have you finished yours?”
“No, father,” with a dropping lip.

“Well, I’ll tell you what. You run up and eat your porridge and come
down as soon as you’re ready; I shall make haste, too, and we shall get a
good half-hour in the garden before I go out.”
Up again went Guy with hasty, willing feet.
“Nurse” (breathless hurry and importance), “I must make haste with my
porridge. Father wants me directly to help him in the garden.”
Nurse winked hard at the fact that the porridge was gobbled. The happy
little boy trotted off to one of the greatest treats he knew, and that day
passed without calamity.

“I can see it will answer, and life will be another thing without Guy’s
passions; but do you think, Edward, it’s right to give the child pleasures
when he’s naughty—in fact, to put a premium upon naughtiness, for it
amounts to that?”
“You’re not quite right there. The child does not know he is naughty; the
emotions of ‘naughtiness’ are there; he is in a physical tumult, but
wilfulness has not set in; he does not yet mean to be naughty, and all is
gained if we avert the set of the will towards wrong doing. He has not had
time to recognise that he is naughty, and his thoughts are changed so
suddenly that he is not in the least aware of what was going on in him
before. The new thing comes to him as naturally and graciously as do all the
joys of the childish day. The question of desert does not occur.”

For a week all went well. Nurse was on the alert, was quick to note the
ruddy storm-signal in the fair little face; never failed to despatch him
instantly, and with a quiet unconscious manner, on some errand to father or
mother; nay, she improved on her instructions; when father and mother
were out of the way, she herself invented some pleasant errand to cook
about the pudding for dinner; to get fresh water for Dickie, or to see if
Rover had had his breakfast. Nurse was really clever in inventing

expedients, in hitting instantly on something to be done novel and amusing
enough to fill the child’s fancy. A mistake in this direction would,
experience told her, be fatal; propose what was stale, and not only would
Guy decline to give up the immediate gratification of a passionate outbreak
—for it is a gratification, that must be borne in mind—but he would begin
to look suspiciously on the “something else” which so often came in the
way of this gratification.
Security has its own risks. A morning came when Nurse was not on the
alert. Baby was teething and fractious, Nurse was overdone, and the nursery
was not a cheerful place. Guy, very sensitive to the moral atmosphere about
him, got, in Nurse’s phrase, out of sorts. He relieved himself by drumming
on the table with a couple of ninepins, just as Nurse was getting baby off
after a wakeful night.
“Stop that noise this minute, you naughty boy! Don’t you see your poor
little brother is going to sleep?” in a loud whisper. The noise was redoubled,
and assisted by kicks on chair-rungs and table-legs. Sleep vanished and
baby broke into a piteous wail. This was too much; the Nurse laid down the
child, seized the young culprit, chair and all, carried him to the furthest
corner, and, desiring him not to move till she gave him leave, set him down
with a vigorous shaking. There were days when Guy would stand this style
of treatment cheerfully, but this was not one. Before Harriet had even noted
the danger signals, the storm had broken out. For half-an-hour the nursery
was a scene of frantic uproar, baby assisting, and even little Flo. Half-an-
hour is nothing to speak of; in pleasant chat, over an amusing book, the
thirty minutes fly like five; but half-an-hour in struggle with a raging child
is a day and a night in length. Mr. and Mrs. Belmont were out, so Harriet
had it all to herself, and it was contrary to orders that she should attempt to
place the child in confinement; solitude and locked doors involved risks that
the parents would, rightly, allow no one but themselves to run. At last the
tempest subsided, spent, apparently, by its own force.
A child cannot bear estrangement, disapproval; he must needs live in the
light of a countenance smiling upon him. His passion over, Guy set himself
laboriously to be good, keeping watch out of the corner of his eye to see
how Nurse took it. She was too much vexed to respond in any way, even by
a smile. But her heart was touched; and though, by-and-by, when Mrs.
Belmont came in, she did say—“Master Guy has been in one of his worst

tempers again, ma’am: screaming for better than half-an-hour”—yet she did
not tell her tale with the empressement necessary to show what a very bad
half-hour they had had. His mother looked with grave reproof at the
delinquent, but she was not proof against his coaxing ways.
After dinner she remarked to her husband, “You will be sorry to hear that
Guy has had one of his worst bouts again. Nurse said he screamed steadily
for more than half-an-hour.”
“What did you do?”
“I was out at the time, doing some shopping. But when I came back,
after letting him know how grieved I was, I did as you say, changed his
thoughts and did my best to give him a happy day.”
“How did you let him know you were grieved?”
“I looked at him in a way he quite understood, and you should have seen
the deliciously coaxing, half-ashamed look he shot up at me. What eyes he
has!”
“Yes, the little monkey! and no doubt he measured their effect on his
mother; you must allow me to say that my theory certainly is not to give
him a happy day after an outbreak of this sort.”
“Why, I thought your whole plan was to change his thoughts, to keep
him so well occupied with pleasant things that he does not dwell on what
agitated him.”
“Yes, but did you not tell me the passion was over when you found
him?”
“Quite over, he was as good as gold.”
“Well, the thing we settled on was to avert a threatened outbreak by a
pleasant change of thought; and to do so in order that, at last, the habit of
these outbreaks may be broken. Don’t you see, that is a very different thing
from pampering him with a pleasant day when he has already pampered
himself with the full indulgence of his passion?”
“Pampered himself! Why, you surely don’t think those terrible scenes
give the poor child any pleasure. I always thought he was a deal more to be
pitied than we.”

“Indeed I do. Pleasure is perhaps hardly the word; but that the display of
temper is a form of self indulgence, there is no doubt at all. You, my dear,
are too amiable to know what a relief it is to us irritable people to have a
good storm and clear the air.”
“Nonsense, Edward! But what should I have done? What is the best
course after the child has given way?”
“I think we must, as you suggested before, consider how we ourselves
are governed. Estrangement, isolation, are the immediate consequences of
sin, even of what may seem a small sin of harshness and selfishness.”
“Oh, but don’t you think that is our delusion? that God is loving us all
the time, and it is we who estrange ourselves?”
“Without doubt; and we are aware of the love all the time, but, also, we
are aware of a cloud between us and it; we know we are out of favour. We
know, too, there is only one way back, through the fire. It is common to
speak of repentance as a light thing, rather pleasant than otherwise; but it is
searching and bitter: so much so, that the Christian soul dreads to sin, even
the sin of coldness, from an almost cowardly dread of the anguish of
repentance, purging fire though it is.”
Mrs. Belmont could not clear her throat to answer for a minute. She had
never before had such a glimpse into her husband’s soul. Here were deeper
things in the spiritual life than any of which she yet knew.
“Well then, dear, about Guy; must he feel this estrangement, go through
this fire?”
“I think so, in his small degree; but he must never doubt our love. He
must see and feel that it is always there, though under a cloud of sorrow
which he only can break through.”

Guy’s lapse prepared the way for further lapses. Not two days passed
before he was again hors de combat. The boy, his outbreak over, was ready
at once to emerge into the sunshine. Not so his mother. His most bewitching
arts met only with sad looks and silence.

He told his small scraps of nursery news, looking in vain for the
customary answering smile and merry words. He sidled up to his mother,
and stroked her cheek; that did not do, so he stroked her hand; then her
gown; no answering touch, no smile, no word; nothing but sorrowful eyes
when he ventured to raise his own. Poor little fellow! The iron was
beginning to enter; he moved a step or two away from his mother, and
raised to hers eyes full of piteous doubt and pleading. He saw love, which
could not reach him, and sorrow, which he was just beginning to
comprehend. But his mother could bear it no longer: she got up hastily and
left the room. Then the little boy, keeping close to the wall, as if even that
were something to interpose between him and this new sense of desolation,
edged off to the furthest corner of the room, and sinking on the floor with a
sad, new quietness, sobbed out lonely sobs; Nurse had had her lesson, and
although she, too, was crying for her boy, nobody went near him but Flo. A
little arm was passed round his neck; a hot little cheek pressed against his
curls:
“Don’t cry, Guy!” two or three times, and when the sobs came all the
thicker, there was nothing for it but that Flo must cry too; poor little
outcasts!
At last bedtime came, and his mother; but her face had still that sad, far-
away look, and Guy could see she had been crying. How he longed to
spring up and hug her and kiss her as he would have done yesterday. But
somehow he dared not; and she never smiled nor spoke, and yet never
before had Guy known how his mother loved him.
She sat in her accustomed chair by the little white bed, and beckoned the
little boy in his nightgown to come and say his prayers. He knelt at his
mother’s knee as usual, and then she laid her hands upon him.
“‘Our Father’—oh, mother, mo—o—ther, mother!” and a torrent of tears
drowned the rest, and Guy was again in his mother’s arms, and she was
raining kisses upon him, and crying softly with him.
Next morning his father received him with open arms.
“So my poor little boy had a bad day yesterday!”
Guy hung his head and said nothing.

“Would you like me to tell you how you may help ever having quite
such another bad day?”
“Oh yes, please, father; I thought I couldn’t help.”
“Can you tell when the ‘Cross-man’ is coming?”
Guy hesitated. “Sometimes, I think. I get all hot.”
“Well, the minute you find he’s coming, even if you have begun to cry,
say, ‘Please excuse me, Nurse,’ and run downstairs, and then four times
round the garden as fast as you can, without stopping to take breath!”
“What a good way! Shall I try it now?”
“Why, the ‘Cross-man’ isn’t there now. But I’ll tell you a secret: he
always goes away if you begin to do something else as hard as you can; and
if you can remember to run away from him round the garden, you’ll find he
won’t run after you; at the very worst, he won’t run after you more than
once round!”
“Oh, father, I’ll try! What fun! See if I don’t beat him! Won’t I just give
Mr. ‘Cross-man’ a race! He shall be quite out of breath before we get round
the fourth time.”
The vivid imagination of the boy personified the foe, and the father
jumped with his humour. Guy was eager for the fray; the parents had found
an ally in their boy; the final victory was surely within appreciable distance.

“This is glorious, Edward; and it’s as interesting as painting a picture or
writing a book! What a capital device the race with Mr. ‘Cross-man’ is! It’s
like ‘Sintram.’ He’ll be so much on the qui vive for ‘Cross-man’ that he’ll
forget to be cross. The only danger I see is that of many false alarms. He’ll
try the race, in all good faith, when there is no foe in pursuit.”
“That’s very likely; but it will do no harm. He is getting the habit of
running away from the evil, and may for that be the more ready to run when
’tis at his heels; this, of running away from temptation, is the right principle,
and may be useful to him in a thousand ways.”

“Indeed, it may be a safeguard to him through life. How did you get the
idea?”
“Do you remember how Rover was cured of barking after carriages?
There were two stages to the cure; the habit of barking was stopped, and a
new habit was put in its place; I worked upon the recognised law of
association of ideas, and got Rover to associate the rumble of wheels with a
newspaper in his mouth. I tried at the time to explain how it was possible to
act thus on the ‘mind’ of a dog.”
“I recollect quite well, you said that the stuff—nervous tissue, you called
it—of which the brain is made is shaped in the same sort of way—at least
so I understood—by the thoughts that are in it, as the cover of a tart is
shaped by the plums below. And then, when there’s a place ready for them
in the brain, the same sort of thoughts always come to fill it.”
“I did not intend to say precisely that,” said Mr. Belmont, laughing,
“especially the plum part. However, it will do. Pray go on with your
metaphor. It is decided that plums are not wholesome eating. You put in
your thumb, and pick out a plum; and that the place may be filled, and well
filled, you pop in a—a—figures fail me—a peach!”
“I see! I see! Guy’s screaming fits are the unwholesome plum which we
are picking out, and the running away from Cross-man the peach to be got
in instead. (I don’t see why it should be a peach though, unpractical man!)
His brain is to grow to the shape of the peach, and behold, the place is
filled. No more room for the plum.”[21]
“You have it; you have put, in a light way, a most interesting law, and I
take much blame to myself that I never thought, until now, of applying it to
Guy’s case. But now I think we are making way; we have made provision
for dislodging the old habit and setting a new one in its place.”
“Don’t you think the child will be a hero in a very small way, when he
makes himself run away from his temper?”
“Not in a small way at all; the child will be a hero. But we cannot be
heroes all the time. In sudden gusts of temptation, God grant him grace to
play the hero, if only through hasty flight; but in what are called besetting
sins, there is nothing safe but the contrary besetting good habit. And here is
where parents have such infinite power over the future of their children.”

“Don’t think me superstitious and stupid; but somehow this scientific
training, good as I see it is, seems to me to undervalue the help we get from
above in times of difficulty and temptation.”
“Let me say that it is you who undervalue the virtue, and limit the scope
of the Divine action. Whose are the laws Science labours to reveal? Whose
are the works, body or brain, or what you like, upon which these laws act?”
“How foolish of me! How one gets into a way of thinking that God cares
only for what we call spiritual things. Let me ask you one more question. I
do see that all this watchful training is necessary, and do not wish to be idle
or cowardly about it. But don’t you think Guy would grow out of these
violent tempers naturally, as he gets older?”
“Well, he would not, as youth or man, fling himself on the ground and
roar; but no doubt he would grow up touchy, fiery, open at any minute to a
sudden storm of rage. The man who has too much self-respect for an open
exhibition may, as you know well enough, poor wife, indulge in continual
irritability, suffer himself to be annoyed by trifling matters. No, there is
nothing for it but to look upon an irate habit as one to be displaced by a
contrary habit. Who knows what cheerful days we may yet have, and
whether in curing Guy I may not cure myself? The thing can be done; only
one is so lazy about one’s own habits. Suppose you take me in hand?”
“Oh, I couldn’t! and yet it’s your only fault, dear.”
“Only fault! well, we’ll see. In the meantime there’s another thing I wish
we could do for Guy—stop him in the midst of an outbreak. Do you
remember the morning we found him admiring himself in the glass?”
“Yes, with the photograph in his hand.”
“That was it; perhaps the Cross-man race will answer even in the middle
of a tempest. If not, we must try something else.”
“It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Guy will have no more rages; how then can he be stopped in mid-
tempest?”

“Most hopeful of women! But don’t deceive yourself. Our work is only
well begun, but that, let us hope, is half done.”

His father was right. Opportunities to check him in mid-career occurred;
and Guy answered to the rein. Mr. Cross-man worked wonders. A record of
outbreaks was kept; now a month intervened; two months; a year; two
years; and at last his parents forgot their early troubles with their sweet-
tempered, frank-natured boy.

FOOTNOTES:
[21] To state the case more accurately, certain cell connections appear to
be established by habitual traffic in certain thoughts; but there is so
much danger of over-stating or of localising mental operations, that
perhaps it is safe to convey the practical outcome of this line of research
in a more or less figurative way—as, the wearing of a field-path; the
making of a bridge; a railway, &c.

CHAPTER II

ATTENTION.

“But now for the real object of this letter (does it take your breath away to
get four sheets?) We want you to help us about Kitty. My husband and I are
at our wits’ end, and should most thankfully take your wise head and kind
heart into counsel. I fear we have been laying up trouble for ourselves and
for our little girl. The ways of nature are, there is no denying it, very
attractive in all young creatures, and it is so delightful to see a child do as
‘’tis its nature to,’ that you forget that Nature, left to herself, produces a
waste, be it never so lovely. Our little Kitty’s might so easily become a
wasted life.
“But not to prose any more, let me tell you the history of Kitty’s
yesterday—one of her days is like the rest, and you will be able to see
where we want your help.
“Figure to yourself the three little heads bent over ‘copy-books’ in our
cheery schoolroom. Before a line is done, up starts Kitty.
“‘Oh, mother, may I write the next copy—s h e l l? “Shell” is so much
nicer than—k n o w, and I’m so tired of it.’
“‘How much have you done?’
“‘I have written it three whole times, mother, and I really can’t do it any
more! I think I could do—s h e l l. “Shell” is so pretty!’
“By-and-by we read; but Kitty cannot read—can’t even spell the words
(don’t scold us, we know it is quite wrong to spell in a reading lesson),
because all the time her eyes are on a smutty sparrow on the topmost twig
of the poplar; so she reads, ‘W i t h, birdie!’ We do sums; a short line of
addition is to poor Kitty a hopeless and an endless task. ‘Five and three
make—nineteen,’ is her last effort, though she knows quite well how to add

up figures. Half a scale on the piano, and then—eyes and ears for
everybody’s business but her own. Three stitches of hemming, and idle
fingers plait up the hem or fold the duster in a dozen shapes. I am in the
midst of a thrilling history talk: ‘So the Black Prince——’ ‘Oh, mother, do
you think we shall go to the sea this year? My pail is quite ready, all but the
handle, but I can’t find my spade anywhere!’
“And thus we go on, pulling Kitty through her lessons somehow; but it is
a weariness to herself and all of us, and I doubt if the child learns anything
except by bright flashes. But you have no notion how quick the little
monkey is. After idling through a lesson she will overtake us at a bound at
the last moment, and thus escape the wholesome shame of being shown up
as the dunce of our little party.
“Kitty’s dawdling ways, her restless desire for change of occupation, her
always wandering thoughts, lead to a good deal of friction, and spoil our
schoolroom party, which is a pity, for I want the children to enjoy their
lessons from the very first. What do you think the child said to me
yesterday in the most coaxing pretty way? ‘There are so many things nicer
than lessons! Don’t you think so, mother?’ Yes, dear aunt, I see you put
your finger on those unlucky words ‘coaxing, pretty way,’ and you look, if
you do not say, that awful sentence of yours about sin being bred of
allowance. Isn’t that it? It is quite true; we are in fault. Those butterfly ways
of Kitty’s were delicious to behold until we thought it time to set her to
work, and then we found that we should have been training her from her
babyhood. Well,
‘If you break your plaything yourself, dear,
Don’t you cry for it all the same?
I don’t think it is such a comfort
To have only oneself to blame.’

“So, like a dear, kind aunt, don’t scold us, but help us to do better. Is Kitty
constant to anything? you ask. Does she stick to any of the ‘many things so
much nicer than lessons’? I am afraid that here, too, our little girl is
‘unstable as water.’ And the worst of it is, she is all agog to be at a thing,
and then, when you think her settled to half-an-hour’s pleasant play, off she
is like any butterfly. She says her, ‘How doth the little busy bee,’ dutifully,
but when I tell her she is not a bit like a busy bee, but rather like a foolish,
flitting butterfly, I’m afraid she rather likes it, and makes up to the

butterflies as if they were akin to her, and were having just the good time
she would prefer. But you must come and see the child to understand how
volatile she is.
“‘Oh, mother, please let me have a good doll’s wash this afternoon; I’m
quite unhappy about poor Peggy! I really think she likes to be dirty!’
“Great preparations follow in the way of little tub, and soap, and big
apron; the little laundress sits down, greatly pleased with herself, to undress
her dirty Peggy; but hardly is the second arm out of its sleeve, than, presto!
a new idea; off goes Kitty to clean out her doll’s-house, deaf to all nurse’s
remonstrances about ‘nice hot water,’ and ‘poor dirty Peggy.’
“I’m afraid the child is no more constant to her loves than to her play;
she is a loving little soul, as you know, and is always adoring somebody.
Now it’s her father, now Juno, now me, now Hugh; and the rain of warm
kisses, the soft clasping arms, the nestling head, are delicious, whether to
dog or man. But, alas! Kitty’s blandishments are a whistle you must pay for;
to-morrow it is somebody else’s turn, and the bad part is that she has only
room for one at a time. If we could get a little visit from you, now, Kitty
would be in your pocket all day long; and we, even Peggy, would be left out
in the cold. But do not flatter yourself it would last; I think none of Kitty’s
attachments has been known to last longer than two days.
“If the chief business of parents is to train character in their children, we
have done nothing for Kitty; at six years old the child has no more power of
application, no more habit of attention, is no more able to make herself do
the thing she ought to do, indeed, has no more desire to do the right thing,
than she had at six months old. We are getting very unhappy about it. My
husband feels strongly that parents should labour at character as the Hindoo
gold-beater labours at his vase; that character is the one thing we are called
upon to effect. And what have we done for Kitty? We have turned out a
‘fine animal,’ and are glad and thankful for that; but that is all; the child is
as wayward, as unsteady, as a young colt. Do help us, dear aunt. Think our
little girl’s case over; if you can, get at the source of the mischief, and send
us a few hints for our guidance, and we shall be yours gratefully evermore.”

“And now for my poor little great-niece! Her mother piles up charges
against her, but how interesting and amusing and like the free world of
fairy-land it would all be were it not for the tendencies which, in these days,
we talk much about and watch little against. We bring up our children in the
easiest, happy-go-lucky way, and all the time talk solemnly in big words
about the momentous importance of every influence brought to bear upon
them. But it is true; these naughty, winsome ways of Kitty’s will end in her
growing up like half the ‘girls’—that is, young women—one meets. They
talk glibly on many subjects; but test them, and they know nothing of any;
they are ready to undertake anything, but they carry nothing through. This
week, So-and-so is their most particular friend, next week such another;
even their amusements, their one real interest, fail and flag; but then, there
is some useful thing to be learnt—how to set tiles or play the banjo! And,
all the time, there is no denying, as you say, that this very fickleness has a
charm, so long as the glamour of youth lasts, and the wayward girl has
bright smiles and winning, graceful ways to disarm you with. But youth
does not last; and the poor girl, who began as a butterfly, ends as a grub,
tied to the earth by the duties she never learnt how to fulfil; that is,
supposing she is a girl with a conscience; wanting that, she dances through
life whatever befalls; children, husband, home, must take their chance.
‘What a giddy old grandmother the Peterfields have!’ remarked a pert
young man of my acquaintance. But, indeed, the ‘giddy old grandmother’ is
not an unknown quantity.
“Are you saying to yourself, a prosy old ‘great-aunt’ is as bad as a ‘giddy
old grandmother’? I really have prosed abominably, but Kitty has been on
my mind all the time, and it is quite true, you must take her in hand.
“First, as to her lessons: you must help her to gain the power of
attention; that should have been done long ago, but better late than never,
and an aunt who has given her mind to these matters takes blame to herself
for not having seen the want sooner. ‘But,’ I fancy you are saying, ‘if the
child has no faculty of attention, how can we give it to her? It’s just a
natural defect.’ Not a bit of it! Attention is not a faculty at all, though I
believe it is worth more than all the so-called faculties put together; this, at
any rate, is true, that no talent, no genius, is worth much without the power
of attention; and this is the power which makes men or women successful in
life.

“Attention is no more than this—the power of giving your mind to what
you are about—the bigger the better so far as the mind goes, and great
minds do great things; but have you never known a person with a great
mind, ‘real genius,’ his friends say, who goes through life without
accomplishing anything? It is just because he wants the power to ‘turn on,’
so to speak, the whole of his great mind; he is unable to bring the whole of
his power to bear on the subject in hand. ‘But Kitty?’ Yes, Kitty must get
this power of ‘turning on.’ She must be taught to give her mind to sums and
reading, and even to dusters. Go slowly; a little to-day and a little more to-
morrow. In the first place, her lessons must be made interesting. Do not let
her scramble through a page of ‘reading,’ for instance, spelling every third
word and then waiting to be told what it spells, but see that every day she
learns a certain number of new words—six, twelve, twenty, as she is able to
hear them; not ‘spellings’—terrible invention!—but words that occur in a
few lines of some book of stories or rhymes; and these she should know, not
by spelling, but by sight. It does not matter whether the new words be long
or short, in one syllable or in four, but let them be interesting words. For
instance, suppose her task for to-day be ‘Little Jack Horner,’ she should
learn to know, by sight, thumb, plum, Christmas, corner, &c., before she
begins to read the rhyme; make ‘plum’ with her loose letters, print it on her
slate, let her find it elsewhere in her book, any device you can think of, so
that ‘plum’ is brought before her eyes half-a-dozen times, and each time
recognised and named. Then, when it comes in the reading lesson, it is an
old friend, read off with delight. Let every day bring the complete mastery
of a few new words, as well as the keeping up of the old ones. At the rate of
only six a day she will learn, say, fifteen hundred in a year; in other words,
she will have learned to read! And if it do not prove to be reading without
tears and reading with attention, I shall not presume to make another
suggestion about the dear little girl’s education.
“But do not let the lesson last more than ten minutes, and insist, with
brisk, bright determination, on the child’s full concentrated attention of eye
and mind for the whole ten minutes. Do not allow a moment’s dawdling at
lessons.
“I would not give her rows of figures to add yet; use dominoes or the
domino cards prepared for the purpose, the point being to add or subtract
the dots on the two halves in a twinkling. You will find that the three can