Spontaneous Activity in Education Part 21

"_Method_. The teacher should write the theme on the blackboard, and invite the pupils to think of (not to say) a possible consequence of the fact indicated in the theme. The teacher must let it be understood that the pupils are to work independently, without the help of suggestion. Let us see:

"_Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire_ (theme). Think of a possible consequence, say what happened in consequence.

"_The wool caused a bad smell_. Very good. You repeat the narrative:

"_Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire. The wool caused a bad smell_. Can any one add another little thought, another possible consequence?

"_The teacher reproved Luisa. A pupil opened the window_. The teacher repeats the exercise using the themes A. B. C. and causing the result arrived at with the collaboration of the scholars to be written in their copy-books.

"A theme may be proposed and the pupils may be left free to develop it without any further explanations.

Theme A.--_Luisa threw a piece of wool into the fire_. (The wool caused a bad smell. The teacher reproved Luisa. A companion opened the window to allow the bad odor to escape.)

Theme B.--_Ernesto upset the ink on the floor_. (The floor was stained. The teacher reproved the child. Ernesto promised to be more careful.)

Theme C.--_Elisa read the story well_. (The teacher praised her and gave her a good mark. Elisa was very much pleased.)

Theme D.--_Mario made a blot on his copy-book_. (The teacher did not correct his exercise; she scolded him. The boy went home crying.)

"After all this collective practise the teacher gives a free theme such as the following: 'Maria knew her lesson well.' In developing it, the children are expected to follow the above examples: that is to say, they are to indicate in two sentences the logical effects of such a cause (the teacher gave her ten marks and praised her; then she told her to persevere in her industry)."

Sometimes the teaching has a psychological purport rather than a logical one. In such a case the "little thoughts" are not linked together as cause and effect, but by the display of psychical activities in three spheres: "knowing, feeling, and willing."

Examples:

Amelia made me smell some ammonia (fact perceived).--

What a horrible smell! (sentiment).--I will not smell it again (volition).

Gigi pulled my hair (fact perceived).--It hurt me (sentiment). I pulled my companion's hand away quickly (volition) (_I Diritti della Scuola_, Year xiv, No. 16, p.

232).

With methods such as these it is obvious that every possibility of inspiration and creation will be destroyed. The child has to follow phrase by phrase what the teacher indicates; thus every spark of apt.i.tude for original composition is quenched. Not only does the child remain _empty of material_ wherewith to create, as in the past, but the very capacity for creation disappears, so that if, to-morrow, material should be formed in his mind, he would no longer have the impulse to utilize it, and his thought would be fettered by his school routine.

Intellectual education carried on by the teacher on such a system makes one think of a chauffeur who should shut up the motor of an automobile and try to propel it by the strength of his arms. He would in this case be a porter, and the automobile a useless machine. When, on the other hand, the motor is open, the internal force moves the car and the chauffeur only has to guide it that it may go safely along the street, not run into obstacles or rush into ditches, and not injure any one upon its course.

This _guidance_ is the only thing necessary; but the real progression is due solely to the internal impulse, which no one can create.

It was thus that the first Italian literary Renascence came about, when the "new sweet style" arose with Dante as the spontaneous expression of feeling:

"Count of me but as one Who am the scribe of Love, that when he breathes Take up my pen and as he dictates, write."

(Carey's translation, _Purgatorio_, Canto XXIV.)

The child must create his interior life before he can express anything; he must take spontaneously from the external world constructive material in order to "compose"; he must exercise his intelligence freely before he can be ready to find the logical connection between things. We ought to offer the child that which is necessary for his internal life, and leave him free to produce.

Perhaps it would not then be impossible to meet a child running with sparkling eyes to write a letter, or walking and meditating as he cultivates a nascent inspiration.

We ought to tend and nourish the internal child, and _await_ his manifestations. If imaginative creation comes late, it will be because the intelligence is not sufficiently mature to create until late; and we should no more force it with a fiction than we would put a false mustache on a child because otherwise he will not have one till he is twenty.

THE MORAL QUESTION

When we said, to begin with, that positive science had only given the "reform" of physical life, together with the modern rules of hygiene, as its contribution to society, we were unjust to positive science. It has considered not only physical life, but moral life.

It is enough to think of those studies in bacteriology which refer to the vehicles of infectious maladies in the environment, in order to recognize therefrom a primary token of the important place which is a.s.signed to the community of human interests, and this is now affirmed with an emphasis never before displayed. Microbes multiply chiefly in damp and dirty places; underfed people are more p.r.o.ne to illness than others, and so are those who are overtired. Therefore illness and early death must be the heritage of the poor who, underfed and overtired, live in damp and dirty places? No. It is a question of vehicles. Microbes spread in all directions from the sources of infection, by means of dust, insects and all the usual objects of life, in fact by all the means of transport. They exist in inconceivable and fabulous numbers; and every sick person is an almost incredible source of illness and death. One single person would suffice to contaminate the whole of Europe.

The means of transport allow microbes to cross oceans and continents in every sense. We need only observe the transatlantic lines, and those of the railways of the world, in order to realize the lines of communication between the maladies which afflict humanity in all the places of the earth. We need only study the industrial changes of matter in order to follow in detail the daily path of the microbes, which put all cla.s.ses of society into intimate communication. The rich lady wears linen on her person which comes from the hands of the poor, and is constantly in their keeping; she cannot put food into her mouth unless it is offered to her by the poor who have handled it over and over again.

The air which is breathed by the rich may contain in its dust the desiccated germs which a consumptive workman has scattered on the ground. There is no way of escape. Statistics prove this: the death rate from infectious diseases is tremendously high in all countries, among both rich and poor, although the poor die in a double proportion to the rich. How can we deliver ourselves from this scourge? Only on condition that there be no more sources of infection, that is to say, that there be no longer unhealthful places in the world, and no underfed people constrained to work beyond their strength. The only way by which the individual may escape is that by which all humanity may be saved. This is a great principle, which seems to ring like a trumpet call: Men, help one another, or you will die.

It is a fact that science has inaugurated "works of sanitation" as its practical contribution to the fight against mortality; towns have been opened out, water has been laid on, houses have been built for the poor, and labor has been protected. All the environment tends to ameliorate the "conditions of life" of the population. No works of charity, no expression of love or of pity, has ever been able to do so much. Science has shown us that those works which were called "charitable," and were looked upon merely as a moral virtue, represented the first step, although a restricted and insufficient one, towards the real salvation of the health of humanity. It was that which had to be done in order to fight against death. But, in order to reach the goal, such work should be universal, and should const.i.tute a "reformation" of society. Then it becomes "social progress," when there will be no benefactors or benefited, but merely humanity which has increased its own well-being. This principle: All men are brothers; let them love and help one another, and let not the right hand know what the left hand doeth, will have been translated into practise.

In sentimental times, poverty was a stimulus to which the rich man reacted. The poor did not really tend to educate the rich man's feelings. If, in those times, the poor man had said, "Give me necessities, or thou shalt die," the rich man would have been indignant. He was very far from realizing that the poor man was his brother, with whom he shared his rights, as well as the danger of death.

To-day science has put things on a different footing. It has "realized" that charity benefits both rich and poor, and has const.i.tuted a principle of civilization that which formerly was a "moral principle" entrusted to sentiment.

In the case of morals, too, hygiene has penetrated, and has given individual rules of life. It is through hygiene that debauchery has become less common, that those epicurean feasts which were celebrated in ancient times are replaced to-day by hygienic meals, the value of which consists in the wise proportion between the needs of the body and the food which is prepared. Wine and alcohol are rejected by the rich more than by the poor. We eat in order to keep ourselves in good health, and therefore without excess and without poison. This is what the ancient morality preached when it fought against the vice of gluttony and proclaimed fasting and abstinence to be virtues. No one in those times could have imagined that the day would come when millionaires would voluntarily subst.i.tute lemonade for wine, and that great banquets would disappear entirely, leaving only the accounts of them as a "curiosity" of the past. Nay, more: none of these modern ascetics are proud of their virtue, they seem to respond with simplicity to the gospel precept:

"When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance ... but anoint thine head, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which seeth in secret."

If one of the ancient preachers could talk to these ascetics, he would also be much edified by their conversation. What has become of those pleasantries which formed "life" and "delight" and "gaiety" in the time of Marguerite of Valois? The tales of Boccaccio could not now be discussed in English society, or in any modern aristocratic society even of much lower social rank than that which surrounded Marguerite of Valois. Nowadays people are afraid of uttering an incorrect word, even of hinting at the most innocent functions of the body, or of naming those parts of their clothing which come in contact with the skin. They only talk about elevated things, and only those people who instruct us are looked upon as brilliant conversationalists; those who, in speaking of their travels, tell us about the customs of the people, or who, speaking of politics, tell us of the current situation. Excessive laughter, jokes, and violent gestures are not permitted. Every one keeps his limbs quiet, even avoiding those vivacious and inoffensive gestures which are the natural accompaniment of conversation; the tone of voice is so modulated as to be scarcely audible. The ancient preacher would say, "These people have carried out St. Paul's exhortation to an exaggerated degree: 'But fornication and all uncleanness, let it not once be named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting which are not convenient.'"

And among these evolutions of manners we find that it is once more hygiene which, making itself the guide of fas.h.i.+on, has by degrees simplified clothes, done away with pomatum and rouge, abolished crinolines, modified stays and shoes, caused long-trained dresses to disappear from the streets, and has introduced uniformity in clothing.

If a man who lived in ancient times were to appear among us, he would ask: "Why are the people doing penance? I see men without any ornaments and with their hair cut short; and women who, with an edifying renunciation of vanity, go along the street without wigs and without patches on their faces, with their hair simply knotted up; I see countesses dressed in inexpensive costumes, in simple, dark, monastic dresses, almost like those of the poor. The carriages are dark, like funeral cars, and the servants wear mourning livery.

Carnival no longer enlivens the streets. Every one goes about silently and gravely."

Who could ever have persuaded the people of old times, who used to preach against excessive vanity, that such a picture as this does not represent a time of penance, but ordinary daily life?

These modern people, on their side, are far from thinking that they are condemned to a life of suffering; on the contrary, they look back with horror on the society of the past; they would never go back to those days when men were enslaved by grand dresses and by rouge, poisoning themselves with debauchery and dying of infectious diseases.

They have freed themselves from a great many useless bonds and have realized a higher enjoyment of life. All the comfort which makes life so delicious to-day would have been an incomprehensible secret to the n.o.bility of past centuries. It is the secret of life.

Possibly, at one time, monks and those who were living in the world thought of each other in a similar way. Those who had renounced the bondage of the world and all its vanities possessed a secret of life which was full of hitherto unknown delights, and they looked with horror upon the so-called pleasure of their century; while those unconscious men who were slaves from the tops of their be-wigged heads to their feet compressed in narrow boots, called the ways of death "life and enjoyment."

Positive science has made yet another contribution penetrating directly into the sphere of morality. By statistic methods of sociology the social problems of immorality and crime have been opened up, and external facts have been studied; and criminal anthropology has revealed the "inferior types" who by hereditary taint are those who have a predisposition to all the moral infection of their surroundings. Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the resulting theories of Lombroso concerning criminals have undoubtedly brought light into this chaos, wherein opinion as to human goodness and wickedness was divided. Forms of "degeneration" are chiefly rooted in the nervous system, and all the abnormal personalities produced thereby "deviate" from the ordinary type. They have a different intelligence and different morality. False perceptions, false reasoning, illusions, anomalies of the will such as impulses, irresolutions, and crazes, the deficient moral sense on which the abnormal intelligence builds up systematic delusions, which are interpreted as philosophical principles, place these persons in a category apart as extra-social beings.

The general nervous weakness and the wandering intelligence which preclude an interest in work make of these persons individuals incapable of production, who therefore try to live upon the productions of others. This fundamental fact, which tends to unite a dislike of productive labor with impulses towards rapine, causes them to make use of all those surrounding causes which prepare the external means for crime. These men are "bad." But if we observe more closely we see that it is not wickedness with which we have to deal but morbid conditions and social errors. If such be the case, these bad men, who from no fault of their own were born in these unhappy conditions, and who are driven to perdition by society, are really "victims." Their whole history, when closely investigated, reveals this fact. They are hunted and neglected from babyhood. Incapable of making themselves beloved owing to mental deficiency, volitive disorders, to the anomaly of the affections and also to lack of physical attraction, they pa.s.s from maternal persecution to that of the school, and finally to that of society, bringing on themselves every kind of punishment.

The first picture which Morel drew of these "dead ones of the race"

was an impressive one. According to his original theory, containing a synthesis which, if not very exact, yet sums up the phenomenon with comprehensive clearness, when a cause of degeneration acts upon a man, he may have defective children, whose deficiency increases in the two or three following generations, until it is extinguished in the final sterility of exceedingly debased individuals. According to Morel, madmen, criminals, epileptics and idiots form the sad series in this extinction of man. The man who dies leaving strong descendants, does not really die, but is renewed in them, youth succeeding to age. It is only the degenerate who dies, for his kind is "extinguished," the few miserable generations whom he produces represent a "living agony."

This "dying species," which lives among the healthy, exhibiting its weakness, its delusions, its convulsions, irritability and egoism, is finally driven into those tombs of the living, lunatic asylums and prisons.

What a living picture, and what a warning to man! One "fault" may be a mortal one to him, for, like the Biblical curse, it transmits itself to generations, and leads to eternal perdition.

How terrible it is to think of punishment falling on the innocent head of a child! and how evident it is that our present life is not everything, but that it has a continuation, when we shall reap the true rewards or the true punishments of our existence. The choice lies to a great extent in our own hands. Shall we have a beautiful, healthy, prolific son, or a deformed, unhealthy, barren son, incapable of loving and understanding us? The hygiene of generation is the most important part of moral hygiene. If the salvation of the individual life can only be obtained by caring for the hygienic life of the whole of humanity, it is only by rigorously following the laws of health and the laws of life that the salvation of the species can be obtained.

Alcoholism, all poisons, overwork, const.i.tutional maladies, dissipation of nervous force, vice, and idleness, are all _causes_ of degeneration. It was science which went on preaching these things for the salvation of mankind, and by these means propagating virtue. But above all, it inculcated the great principle of "pardon," which hitherto had been one of the mysteries of religious morality.

A few years ago, no one, however pitiful and generous, could have looked upon the delinquent with the same justice and pity as science has done. It has pointed out that we are _all_ responsible for this victim of social causes, that we must all accuse ourselves of the sins committed by the inferior individual, and exert ourselves for his regeneration by all the means in our power. It was only the saints who had an intuition of this truth, when they offered their merits for all men in common and accepted responsibility for the offenses of all.