Homo culture Part 8

As the child is working out of babyhood, every day counting (as no day of half illness in childhood can count), and well into boyhood, the single principle already outlined, of leaving the little individuality to establish its own activities and socialities, seems sufficient, as the ill.u.s.trations appended, I believe, prove. Doubtless a child that is not, day after day, enjoying, and often thrilled by health and life, as this little boy is, a child not brought up in an unbroken _camaraderie_ with both parents, such as he has had, and particularly a child not having the send-off of trust and amiable impulse which he received before his birth, could not be left to blossom in such wild-flower style. Ugly, sulky or "streaky" conduct, jumping perversely out in place of good cheer, we have never had to deal with. In fact, we have never been able to detect the slightest resentment immediately after punis.h.i.+ng him for taking forbidden articles, or for raising an outcry over being denied sundry things he wanted. His crying when punished is that of pure grief, and he is ready at once to nestle down under the hand that had spatted disapproval, to be comforted, resuming good spirits two or three minutes later on. In the main, simply "No, no!" from either parent, has sufficed to stop him in the beginnings of mischief, sometimes resulting in cheerful desisting, and sometimes in a little of what we call the "grieved cry." But this, too, if it becomes loud or insistent, can be hushed by another "No, no," and enable him to regain control of himself.

With this regained self-control has always come gratefulness for aid in the matter, as evinced by extra sweetness and brightness immediately after, and eager resumption of some one or other of his plays or calls with one or both of us. This may be what is known as discipline. It always brings a smile to our faces, however.

Without a break of more than a day or two at a time, we have been able to be equally near him all the while, and divide up about equally the matters of bathing, feeding, dressing and undressing him. The conventional estimate of those standing nearest to a child of,

1--Mother, 2--Nurse, 3--Teacher, 4--Servants and playmates, 5--Older brother or sister, 6--Father--the man behind the newspaper,

certainly does not apply here. When I am absent for from three to six hours his uneasiness sets in, and grows stronger and stronger, ending in repeated expeditions to a short distance along the road, where he stands and calls "Vager," "Vager," (Father, Father,) at first hopefully, then protestingly, and sometimes at last with indignation or tears. When I return--and he listens and catches the first distant sound of hoofs, or wheels, or whinny of the left-at-home colts, or voice, or opening gate--an eager, beaming face welcomes me from gate or doorway, or even several rods down the beaten snow on the road. Once back, things are all right in his little domain again, and he goes on, without special attention to me, in his series of occupations and plays.

I say "occupations." They are nothing else to him; serious matters that he goes about accomplis.h.i.+ng. He is at his best when he can help his mother at her work--blowing the fire, bringing her kindling, handing her clothespins one by one as she needs them, shutting or opening doors on request, picking up articles from the floor. But there are many hours continuously when he is left to his own devices, which are numerous, though many of them he goes through daily, such as feeding the cat, visiting his little sister, emptying and refilling the wall-pockets, collecting his blocks, and fis.h.i.+ng articles off the table with a long stick. He has learned, untaught, to get a cloth to open the stove door with and save burned fingers; to get and bring clean diapers to his mother when he wishes a change; to stoop and lap water out of the pail; to stand by his bed and point up at it when wis.h.i.+ng his mid-day nap; to retreat to a dark corner and drape his handkerchief over his head for a brief period towards the close of a day, in lieu of the discarded second nap; to scoop bread or biscuit out of a pail hung above his reach, with an iron spoon; to la.s.so peaches toward him with a cord, said peaches being in pan on the floor just beyond where he could reach from a little gate separating the kitchen and sitting-room. None of these things has been taught him. Nothing whatever has been taught him, and especially no words and no "tricks." He invents or does without, in all non-essential matters, in regular Spartan style. So, in pursuit of his own undertakings, he rarely asks for what he would have; just tries and tries, day after day, until he succeeds or is beaten. But as he is at some new act or plan much of the time when left to himself, he has, we are satisfied, independently attained to more of childish accomplishment than the most incessant teaching processes could have effected. In doing what he does do, for instance, in certain climbing feats, he has slowly worked up to, he is both cautious and sure; he rarely tumbles and never loses his confidence. Thus for the past two days he has achieved the feat of climbing up and standing erect on a little box fourteen inches high, where he calls and shouts and roars to us his ecstacy over the matter for ten minutes at a time. Today only he has found out how to get down alone. Contrast is taken here with the frequent falls and wailings of children who are first persuaded into attempts of various sorts, but have not worked out a real personal mastery of given acts for themselves.

He has quite a vocabulary now of his own invention. The meanings of these terms we have learned mostly, and use them to him. Of our vocabulary he understands the meanings of a large number of the words for things in which he is interested, forty or fifty nouns, and a dozen verbs, perhaps. He sings to his mother, and now and then to me, rude imitations of the songs he has heard us sing, and his mother he roughly accompanies. His inflections of voice have developed to the point of entirely expressing many of his emotions; while his expressions of face are as much beyond these as the inflections are beyond his stock of English--about seven words, and those requiring some exigency to bring out.

All this pleases us, because we truly want him to become rich in his own life, to subsist and grow in his own home-made lines of feeling and thought; and not to learn words, parrot-like, before he has the thought formed, and searching, even struggling, for a means by which to convey itself. It is dearth of internal life, emotion and unaided thought that is in need of replenishment in the average young person, not lack of English dictionary terms for things that can be _talked about_, but are evidently not intrinsic and personal.

C. W. LYMAN, M. D.

_New Castle, Col._

_NOTES._

_War and Parentage._

In the interests of unborn children we should, so far as possible, remove from the world those causes which, acting on the mother, either directly or indirectly, may injure them by lowering the standard of their health, or by altering and debasing their moral and intellectual natures. One of the most potent of the causes for harm is war. War has generally been regarded as one of the enn.o.bling professions. If we look upon it in its most favorable light, all that we can say in its favor is that among primitive and barbarous races it has perhaps resulted in the preservation and spread of the most capable ones, and that it has at the same time welded them together into larger groups, and finally into nations, and habituated them to those restraints which are necessary to social existence; but we no longer require it for this purpose, and the industrial pursuits and the evolution of civilization are so disturbed by them that they should cease, and especially should they cease in the interest of our children, both born and unborn.

How can war injure children? We have already shown in the chapter on Prenatal Culture that when the mother is under the influence of any powerful mental emotion, such as fear, depression, anger and similar pa.s.sions during the months in which the child is being developed in her womb, there is very great danger of permanent injury to it. Only the strongest mothers, those with the most robust health, or who have the most stable nerves, those who are rarely thrown off their balance, are capable of resisting the intense excitements to which they are subject during some of the phases of war.

As I mentioned in my early work on Marriage and Parentage, Esquirol, a French historian, gives details of a considerable number of cases of children born soon after some of the sieges of the French Revolution, which were weakly, nervous and idiotic, on account of the terrible strain to which their mothers had been subjected. In every war where a city is besieged, even if its women and children are sent away, they cannot be altogether free from anxieties and mental strains of a most unwholesome nature, and if some of them are soon to become mothers, the offspring not yet born must suffer. No one can estimate the vast number of children injured under such conditions in the ages past. They have been only incidentally referred to in history. The fame and glory of conquerors must not be dimmed by the relation of such occurrences.

Joseph A. Allen, in _The Christian Register_, gives the results of some of his observations which bear on this subject. He says:

"So much is being said about war and its effects, that I am prompted to send you the result of my observations.

"I was in charge of the Ma.s.sachusetts State Reform School for several years, when every inmate (there were between three and four hundred) was born before the Civil War--during the time of the great anti-slavery agitation, which did so much to educate the moral sense of the people.

"I was again in charge of the same inst.i.tution _when every inmate was born during, or soon after the war, when the mothers were reading, talking and dreaming of battles, and of husbands, fathers or brothers who had gone to the war_.

"_I found as great a difference in the character of those inmates born before and after the Civil War as exists between a civilized and a savage nation._

"_Those under my care the second time were much more difficult to control, more quarrelsome and defiant, less willing to work or study.

The crimes for which they were sentenced were as different as their characters._

"It was not uncommon for them to be sentenced for breaking and entering with deadly weapons.

"This difference was not confined to inmates of reform schools, but it was manifest throughout all cla.s.ses.

"After the war crimes increased rapidly. In Boston garroting was common, and was only checked by Judge Russell sentencing all such subjects to the full extent of the law.

"Before the close of the Civil War the State Prison at Charlestown, under Mr. Gideon Haynes, was, according to Dr. D. C. Wines, D. D., the model prison of the United States. Since that time it has been almost impossible to maintain proper discipline, owing, no doubt, to the more desperate character of the inmates.

"Let us try to trace these effects back to their causes, and prove, if possible, that whatsoever a man (or nation) soweth, that shall it also reap."

But there are other ways in which war militates against the n.o.blest motherhood. Camp life is a school for vice and prost.i.tution. In Camp Chickamauga, which is a sample of them all, during the war with Spain on account of Cuba, the amount and baseness of the prost.i.tution by the soldiers, with both black and white women, exceeded description. In a single day forty-one cases of specific disease applied to the physicians at the hospitals for treatment. These things were not reported in the daily papers; they were too vile. The place was a hot-bed of vice, rather than a school of virtue and patriotism. In all European armies it is the same. In times of peace, soldiers from the highest to the lowest in rank, insist that facility shall be allowed them for the gratification of their pa.s.sional natures. The officers, not being permitted to marry unless they or their wives have a certain income, keep their mistresses, and not a female servant near a camp is safe. The immoral influences here generated spread throughout society, lower the standard of morals among both men and women in private life, and jeopardize the interests of children born or unborn, morally and intellectually, as well as physically.

But there is another view. "Great standing armies," says the Czar of Russia, in his note to the Powers, "_are transforming the armed power of our day into a crus.h.i.+ng burden which the people have more and more difficulty in bearing_."

That is to say, the tax imposed upon the individuals of any nation to support its army pauperizes or keeps on the verge of poverty a large portion of the race. It is war, far more than any other cause, which has created the burden of taxation. In some European countries almost every man carries a soldier or sailor on his back, that is, he must labor not only to support himself and family, but a soldier or sailor who devotes his life to a murderous profession. Is this not a grievous burden which cripples or paralyzes his life and reacts on his offspring?

Now, the poverty caused by this burden is a serious obstacle to the production and training of the young, and especially is this the case in the more populous countries--France, Spain and Italy are examples. These lands were once the most powerful in Europe; they are so no longer. They gloried in war, and spent immense sums of money upon their armies and burdened the people with taxes which should have been reserved for the use of fathers and mothers in educating and providing for the needs of their offspring. War has crushed out the best life of these countries, and other nations which follow in the same path will in the end come to a similar fate. They may hold out a long time, but not forever. "The mills of G.o.ds grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small."

It is because war is an enemy to the highest motherhood that women should array themselves against it. It is one of the greatest foes to the development and welfare of the children they love so well. Women should insist that all governments should settle their differences by peaceful rather than by warlike means. The industrial age may have its difficulties, but they are not insurmountable. In it the fathers and mothers may have the time and the means to study and learn how to improve the race through a wiser parentage. I believe that thoughtful women, when they come to see the evils of war in their true light, as they have seen the evils of prost.i.tution and intemperance, will be its greatest foes.

_Cases of Prenatal Influences._

Alfred Russell Wallace gives in _Nature_ a few cases of prenatal influences sent him by his correspondents. The first experience is from a mother residing in Australia. She writes:

"I can trace in the character of my first child, a girl now twenty-two years of age, a special apt.i.tude for sewing, economical contriving and cutting out, which came to me as a new experience when living in the country among new surroundings, and strict economy being necessary, I began to try to sew for the coming baby and myself. I also trace her great love of history to my study of Froude during that period. Her other tastes for art and literature are distinctly hereditary.

"In the case of my second child, also a daughter, I having interested myself prior to her birth in literary pursuits, the result has been a much acuter form of intelligence, which at six years old enabled her to read and enjoy the ballads which Tennyson was then giving to the world, and which at the age of barely twenty years allowed her to take her degree as B. A. of the Sydney University.

"Before the third child, a boy, was born, the current of our lives had changed a little. Visits to my own family and a change of residence to a distant colony, which involved a long journey, as well as the work incidental to such changes, together with the care of my two older children, absorbed all my time and thoughts, and left little or no leisure for studious pursuits. My occupations were more mechanical than at any other time previous. This boy does not inherit the studious tastes of his sisters at all. He is intelligent and possesses most of the qualifications which will probably conduce to success in life, but he prefers any kind of out-door work or handicraft to study. Had I been as alive then as I am now to the importance of these theories, I should have endeavored to guard against this possibility; as it is, I always feel that it is, perhaps, my fault that one of the greatest pleasures of life has been debarred to him.

"But I must not weary you by so many personal details, and I trust you will not suspect me of vanity in thus bringing my own children under your notice. Suffice it to say that in every instance I can, and do, constantly trace what others might term coincidences, but which appear to me nothing but cause and effect in their several developments."

Mr. Wallace then gives extracts from other correspondents as follows:

Mrs. B---- says: "I can trace, nay, have traced (in secret amus.e.m.e.nt often), something in every child of mine. Before the birth of my eldest girl I took to ornithology, for work and amus.e.m.e.nt, and did a great deal in taxidermy, too. At the age of three years I found this youngster taking such insects and little animals as she could find, and puzzling me with hard questions as to what was inside of them. Later on she used to be seen with a small knife, working and dissecting cleverly and with much care and skill at their _insides_. One day she brought me the tiniest heart of the tiniest lizard you can imagine, so small that I had to examine it through a gla.s.s, though she saw it without any artificial aid. By some means she got a young wallaby, and made an ap.r.o.n with a pocket inside which she used to call her 'pouch.' This study of natural history is still of interest to her, though she lacks time and opportunities. Still, she always does a little dissecting if she gets a chance."

ANOTHER CASE.--"I never noticed anything about P---- for some years.

Three months before he was born a friend, whom I will call Smith, was badly hurt, and was brought to my house to be nursed. I turned out the nursery and he lay there for three months. I nursed him until I could do so no longer, and then took lodgings in town for my confinement. Now after all these years I have discovered how this surgical nursing has left its mark. The boy is in his element when he can be of use in cases of accident, etc. He said to me quite lately: 'How I wish you had made a surgeon of me!' Then all at once it flashed in upon me, but, alas! it was too late to remedy the mistake.

"Before the birth of the third child I pa.s.sed ten of the happiest months of my life. We had a nice house, one side of which was covered with cloth of gold roses and bougainvillea, a garden with plenty of flowers, and a vineyard. Here we lived an idyllic life, and did nothing but fish, catch b.u.t.terflies and paint them. At least my husband painted them after I had caught them and mixed his colors. At the end of this time L---- was born. This child excels in artistic talent of many kinds; nothing comes amiss to her, and she draws remarkably well. She is of a bright gay disposition, finding much happiness in life, even though not always placed in the most fortunate surroundings.

"Before the birth of my next child, N----, a daughter, I had a bad time.

My husband fell ill of fever, and I had to nurse him without help or a.s.sistance of any kind. We had also losses by floods. I don't know how I got through that year, but I had no time for reading. N---- is the most prudent, economical girl I know. She is a splendid housekeeper and a good cook, and will work till she drops; has no taste for reading, but seems to gain knowledge by suction." Such cases are so numerous that they should be collected and scientifically studied.

_Luxury and Parentage._

In all ages of luxury, fine ladies try to avoid maternity. They detest it in theory only, for women are controlled by the instinct of the race.

In the circles of which we are speaking, the instincts of the race for children have vanished. Life has lost its serious meaning.

Responsibility of any kind is a mere nuisance, and the idea of bringing up a new life, with all its bonds and its charm, is as repellant as the idea of a new bonnet is enticing. For such women the world has no use.

Beautiful, in the great sense, they are not. Incapable, in any great way, of either loving or being loved, they are at best the painted bubbles on the stream of life. Such women will always be far inferior as mothers, and less capable of bringing into the world n.o.ble offspring than those women in the humble walks of life who live naturally, who love the family ties and are fond of the young.

Great mothers must have a certain sort of hardihood which comes from a wise physical culture, not necessarily an artificial one,--a life in the open air, and the avoidance of all social dissipation.