Part 13 (1/2)
The human being not only craves liberty and love instinctively, but law also; he ”feels the weight of chance desires,” and ”longs for a repose that ever is the same.” This is the _rationale_ of Frbel's method in the occupations; he suggests the child's action, sometimes by interrogation merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite? which itself suggests the combination of opposites, that immediately produces a symmetrical effect. The child enjoys the symmetry all the more, if he feels as if he personally produced it. This is the secret of his love of repet.i.tion. He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he feels that he does it all of himself. He does not want you to help him even with your words (and you never should help him _except_ with words). If a child acts from a suggestion, he feels free,--but if he produces the same effect, or a similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a still more self-respecting sense of power; and his will becomes more consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness of order.
The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under her care whose will has been exasperated by arbitrary and capricious treatment, or who has been made to act against his inclination till he has reacted, out of pure _contrariness_, as we say. This contrariness proves that he has been outraged; perhaps in some instances the effect has been produced by not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The very violence of the evil may show that he is an exceptionally fine child, with an enormous sense of power that he does not know what to do with because the proper educational influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacy may be a reaction against the vicious will of another, who, instead of offering him the bread of law, has presented to him the stone of his own stumbling. It is indispensable to give the child law, as well as love; but when you are doubtful whether you can genially suggest the law,--at all events express the love; and never subst.i.tute for the law your own will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is G.o.d's will; your will is not creative of the child's will like G.o.d's; its best effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the child's, when the latter is feeble, which it sometimes is by reason of physical mal-organization, or by having been crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish caprice.
I may be told that if Frbel's education is wholly of a genial, coaxing character, it fails of being an image of the Divine Providence, which is an alternation of attractions and antagonisms, speaking now in the music of nature, and now in thunders and lightnings, not only cheris.h.i.+ng the heart with love, but stimulating the will with law; and be warned not to enervate the character, by producing an aesthetic luxury of sentiment, by which the personal being shall stagnate in the worst kind of selfishness--the pa.s.sive kind. This objection might be pertinent, if the kindergarten were to be protracted beyond the era to which Frbel limits it. Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity. The purest, most loving, most disinterested will known to human history, recognized that there might be a _wiser_ will, not to be doubted as still more loving; and said, ”Not my will, but Thine be done,”--”Into Thy hands I commend my spirit” (my free causal power). But let the kindergartner remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and beware of enacting the sovereign judge. There is no doubt that an exclusively cheris.h.i.+ng tenderness should be the law of the nursery, with no antagonism whatever, because at that age it is a wise self-a.s.sertion which we wish to develop. We therefore act _for_ the infant, having secured his acting _with_ us by our genial encouragement. But this is no argument for continuing to act for him, when he can act with consciousness of an individual life. We must not prolong babyhood into the kindergarten; or, at least, we must begin to engraft personal consciousness upon it, by _playing_ little antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against the play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the children play with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says, ”according to laws,” and they will all the more likely seek laws when they come into wider relations.
The development of the consciousness of man is serial. In the nursery we coax the child to exercise the various muscles by playfully duplicating their action; we make him _make believe_ walk, impressing his senses, as it were, with the whole operation as an object. The child first experiences the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake of renewing this pleasure; then enjoys your helping him to do what he has not yet the bodily strength and skill to accomplish; and finally wills to take up his body and make his first independent step. This is the first crisis in the history of his individuality, and every mother knows it is the cheer of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pa.s.s through it. He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your care, he has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the pain of numerous falls, from want of guardian arms and supporting hands. Such pains disturb and haunt his fancy, and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy give strength and enterprise to activity.
The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary processes which foreshadow all the processes of the Divine Providence. Therefore, even in the nursery we _play_ antagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoyment by making him conscious of isolation a moment, to restore, as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head unexpectedly, and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So we sometimes pretend to let him fall, and just when he is about to cry with alarm, catch him again and kiss him.
Frbel in his nursery plays has several of this nature; and as children grow older they play antagonisms spontaneously, which are beneficial just so far as they elicit the consciousness of individual power; but are harmful if, proceeding too far, they show its limitations painfully, and make the child feel himself a victim.
In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened--if it is never superseded by your will--until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then, as he took his body into his own keeping when he began to run alone, so now he will take his character into his own hands to educate, and he will do it all the more certainly and energetically, if he feels you to be an all-helping, all-cheris.h.i.+ng, all-inspiring friend, which you must needs be if you are open to feel and wise to know G.o.d's love to you, in making you His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the immeasurable love of G.o.d, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for the fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the form of will; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it keeps its freedom to alter and alter and alter, till there is no longer any evil to be conscious of, and men shall have got the dominion over nature, which consists in using it for all generous purposes, in a universal mutual understanding with one another. To be in the progressive attainment of this high destiny, is the growing happiness of man; a happiness which must ever have in it that element of _victory_, which distinguishes the eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of Buddha.
MORAL SENTIMENT.
WE have been asked by one of the students of Frbel's art and science, what books we should recommend to help her to a fuller knowledge of the subjects on which we gave a few hints in our first and second paper of _Glimpses_.
In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed preparation for any study of books on intellectual and moral philosophy, to look back on our own moral history and mental experience, and ask ourselves what was the process of our moral growth, and the circ.u.mstances of the formation of our opinions; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians, and companions, had the best--and what the worst--practical effects upon our characters; what aided and what hindered us? Every fault in our characters has its history, having generally originated in the action of others upon us; sometimes their intentional action, which may have been merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and malignant; and sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted. On the other hand, much of our life that has blest ourselves and others, can be referred to spontaneous manifestations of others, having no special reference to ourselves; generous sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous acts recorded in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life; great truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which our young hearts mused till the fire burned.
This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we share, is a living nucleus that will give vital meaning to any true words with which scientific treatises on the mind are written; and a power to judge whether the writer is talking about facts of life, or mere abstractions, out of which have died all spiritual substance, leaving only ”a heap of empty boxes.” In no department of study are we more liable to take words for things than in this. Abstraction is the source of all the false philosophy and theology which has distracted the world. Generalizations are of no aid--but a delusion and a snare--unless the mental and moral phenomena, from which they are derived, have been the writer's experiences, personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as substantial as material things, to say the least; and even they do not do justice to the whole truth, which is--if we may so express it--the vital experience of G.o.d. Hence is the Living Word to which human abstractions can never do justice; being, indeed, but the refuse of thought, ”a weight to be laid aside” and forgotten, like a work done, as we stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our ”high calling.”
In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell's _Philosophy of Rhetoric_, there is a section headed, ”Why is it that nonsense so often escapes being detected, both by the writer and reader?” It explains with great perspicuity the uses and abuses of our faculty of abstraction, which is not a spiritual, but merely an intellectual faculty. I would commend this essay (and indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a student of intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a second time with some other papers, by Phillips & Sampson, Boston, in 1857, and probably still to be found in old bookstores, if it be not reprinted by its author, R. L. Hazard.
On the subject of my second paper of _Glimpses_ the same author has written two books, one published by D. Appleton, in New York, in 1864, _The Freedom of the Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a Creative First Cause_; and in 1869, Lee & Shepard, Boston, published, as supplement, _Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Willing, addressed to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the Existence of Matter, and our Notions of Infinite s.p.a.ce_.[13]
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM TO WILL.
IF the spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent love, hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date,
”An eye among the blind, That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind,”
yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well as the body, begins in time, and gradually identifies the individual for communication with other individuals of its kind. The beginning of the human understanding is in the impressions of an environing universe, against which the sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the organs of sense, which are the connection of those two great contrasts, the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions of sense are the instrumentality by which the will vivifies the heart, so disposing the particulars of the surrounding universe as to give the definite form of _thoughts_ to consciousness. The human being has no absolute knowledge like the lower animals, who are pa.s.sive instrumentality of G.o.d to certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created for the infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with one another and G.o.d, men need to become conscious of the whole process of their own being, and do so by a gradual conversation with G.o.d, who is forever saying, by the universe, which is his speech, I AM. And here education begins its offices, by helping man to reply THOU ART, which he does by his legitimate art. But no one man can utter the _thou art_ of humanity adequately. It takes all humanity forever and ever to do so; and it does not do so but just so far as the men who compose it are in mutual understanding and communion with each other. Therefore each child must be taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to realize his own consciousness by learning that of his fellows.
In the action and reaction of the individual with his special environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which gives him pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the former, and repelled from the latter; and thus come to discriminate outward things from each other. The observation and discrimination of the particulars of nature is _thinking_. Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts, but discrimination and cla.s.sification of things according to their similarities, is the _operation_ of thought.
Education has an office in both the acc.u.mulation of sensuous impressions and the operation of thinking. The mother and nurse of each child must so order the objects about him, that his organs shall be properly impressed, and not overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good instrumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions. A tender sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is gradually coming to identify himself, and love,--such as only a mother can have in the greatest perfection,--are the special qualifications of the educator at this stage. Such a knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable the educator to lead the child's activity according to law and order, can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite plane, an image of G.o.d's creative action. The educator who should succeed the nurse is the kindergartner, who, without lacking the sympathetic affection of the nurse, must add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so that she may bring these opposites into their right connection with each other.
She will therefore lead the child to _produce_ something that shall serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead of letting the blind will spend its energy in wild and aimless motion, she will present a desirable aim to attain, which will produce an effect that shall satisfy the heart, and produce an object that shall engage the attention, and stimulate to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly known, not only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being, which was the child's own method of producing the thing.
The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous impression, which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, secondly, perception; and, thirdly, an adapting of means to ends, and thereby rising into judgment and knowledge. To get understanding precedes getting knowledge, which is the special work of the understanding when it is developed.
There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding, and which is to be discriminated from it--fancy. Vivid and clear sensuous impressions are the foundation of fancy, as well as of understanding.
But the will, acting among these impressions in a wild and sovereign way, is fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the order of nature, is understanding. Frbel has provided for the development of the understanding the occupations, as he calls the regular _production_ of forms, transient and permanent. Nothing can be produced which satisfies the aesthetic sense, except by following the laws of creation. To a.n.a.lyze these productions will give experimental understanding of those laws. In superintending the occupations, the kindergartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right words; for words, the first works of human art, have a great deal to do with the development of the understanding, lifting man into a sphere above that of the mere animal. After a thing is made, or an effect produced and named, it must be made a subject for a.n.a.lysis; and it can easily be made so, because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action into a thing, makes it interesting to them; and they can make an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis of it, because, in addition to its appearances, they know the law of its being, which was their own method, and the cause of its being, which was their own _motive_. From a.n.a.lyzing their own works, children can, in due time, be led to a.n.a.lyze works of nature. And here the kindergartner has great room for the exercise of judgment, in the selection of suitable objects.
Frbel advised that objects for lessons should be taken from the vegetable creation; and that children should be interested in planting seeds and watching growth, becoming acquainted with its general conditions, observing which are within the scope of their own powers to provide, and which are beyond human power; thus leading the understanding through nature, outward and inward, to G.o.d.