The Voice and Spiritual Education Part 4

The rectification of the intellect must, as the greatest poem of the century, Browning's 'Ring and the Book,' implicitly teaches, be through the rectification of the spiritual, absolute man.

As bearing directly on my leading subject, the vocal interpretation of literature (that is, spiritualized thought), I would indicate some of the means and conditions of a more spiritual education than is contemplated in the most advanced educational schemes of the day.

What may be said to be the predominant idea of the present day, entertained especially by scientists and exercising its influence, more or less, on the great majority of minds, in regard to the main avenue to knowledge and truth? I answer, and I think not unjustifiably, the idea that the a.n.a.lytic, discursive, generalizing intellect, is adequate to solve all solvable problems--that it is the only reliable means of arriving at a positive knowledge; that, accordingly, education, the _highest_ education, consists almost exclusively in learning and in being trained to discover and apply, the laws, so called, of nature, to trace facts to their (scientific) causes and to advance logically from causes to facts--that upon which the a.n.a.lyzing and generalizing intellect cannot be exercised, being set down as unknowable. Of an _intuition_ inaccessible to a.n.a.lysis, they take little or no account.

This some future age, with a more complete education, than ours, will, I am persuaded, regard as the cardinal defect in the education and philosophy of the present age--a defect that tends to deaden, if not to destroy, in many minds, all faith in those spiritual instincts and spiritual susceptibilities and apprehensions, which const.i.tute the basis of a living hope and faith in immortality, and through which, and through which alone, man may know, _without_ thought, some of the highest truths, truths which are beyond the reach of the discourse of reason. While the reasoning faculties of a man may exist in vigor, the ties which unite the soul _sympathetically_ and through a.s.similation, with universal spirituality, may be sundered, and a spiritual world for him there will then be none.

That there are higher and subtler organs of discernment than the discursive intellect, and higher things to be discerned than can be discerned by the senses, the lowliest of men and women, no less than the most exalted in intellect and genius, have, throughout the whole recorded history of the race, borne an incontrovertible testimony. 'The natural condition of humanity,' says William Howitt, 'is alliance with the spiritual; the anti-spiritual is but an epidemic--a disease.'

Great have been the conquests of Science, the last fifty years, and great has been their influence on the temporal well-being of mankind.

But it must be admitted, perhaps, that these conquests, the product mainly of the insulated intellect, have been somewhat at the expense of 'the interior divinity.'

Wordsworth, addressing his friend Coleridge, in the second book of 'The Prelude,' says:

to thee Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity.

He has been speaking of mental science.

The present signs of the times, however, give promise that humanity, far as it has drifted in one direction, will a.s.sert its _wholeness_, and will 'render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's,' and that the awakening of 'the interior divinity,' of the spiritual instincts and intuitions, will be as much the aim of the education of the future as the exercise of the mere intellect now is. This awakening must begin in infancy, when the child first 'rounds to a separate mind,' and can respond to its mother's smile, and feel her protecting care, and the rosy warmth of her love.

Then will the wise mother regard her child as almost wholly an impressionable being, and will see especially to its surroundings and its a.s.sociations whether they are suitable to be stamped upon its plastic mind. As it grows, she will aim to quicken and purify it sentiment, and to cultivate a love of the beautiful in form, in color, in sound, especially as these are exhibited in the works of Nature; will endeavor to bring it into the fullest sympathy with all forms of animal life, down to 'the meanest thing that feels.' It is a good sign when a boy loves animals and is kind to them; but when he is bent on killing things, it can be quite safely inferred that he has not received at home lessons in love and had his sympathies and affections duly awakened.

Home-life in this country is not, as a general thing, such as to bring the best affections into a healthy play. There is too much worry, too much taking thought of the morrow, too much dissatisfaction with the present condition, too much eagerness to get rich. Some fathers never sufficiently dismiss their business and cares from their minds, to play with their children and to show them those little attentions which their young hearts crave; and mothers expend their souls in the cares and vexations of housekeeping, or, if, by reason of their position and wealth, they are free from these, in social or other matters which shut them off, more or less, from those maternal functions which they should consider it their highest duty to exercise. Filial affection certainly does not increase in this country, as the years go on. Is it too much to say, perhaps it is, that it is rather the exception than the rule, for children, after, and often before, their majority, to show a strong attachment either for their parents or for each other? And there is a word in our language that has quite survived its usefulness; and if things continue to go on as they are now going, it will soon be a fit subject for an Archaic Dictionary--I mean the word REVERENCE. It still maintains its place in our Dictionaries of living vocables, but the thing it represents is a _rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno_.

Vain is the attempt to awaken the religious sentiment in a child, to cause it to _feel_ the real significance of the words, as it utters them, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' in whom the filial and the reverential sentiments are quite extinguished. These sentiments are the soil in which the religious sentiment can best germinate, grow, bud, and fragrantly bloom.

During a child's earliest years the foundation should be laid for that spiritual relations.h.i.+p with Nature which Wordsworth has presented in his great autobiographic poem, 'The Prelude.' Such relations.h.i.+p but very few could realize in themselves as the great high priest of Nature realized it; but all could be brought into a more intimate spiritual relations.h.i.+p with Nature than is favored and promoted, at present, by home influences and by school studies. The latter, when prematurely a.n.a.lytical, and brain slaughtering, tend rather to shut off such relations.h.i.+p.

What is understood as a scientific observation of nature, is not its highest form, so far, at least, as spiritual culture is concerned. It is almost exclusively an a.n.a.lytic observation, in which the conscious intellect plays the chief part. It is study, not spiritual communion.

The highest form of observation (if observation it can strictly be called, which is to so great an extent a rapture of necessity and spontaneity) is that which results from the synthetic play of the spiritual faculties, and brings the outer world and all its minutest features into relation with the inner world of man's spirit, and makes him feel his great allies. It is this kind of observation rather than the other, which 'adds a precious seeing to the eye,' and gives to a man some measure of 'the vision and the faculty divine,' and enables him to know something of the fields that are his own; but from which spiritual torpor may alienate him.

'I, long before the blissful hour arrives,' writes Wordsworth, meaning when the discerning intellect of man shall be wedded to this goodly universe in love and holy pa.s.sion, and shall find the ideal forms of Poets, a simple produce of the common day,

I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation;--and, by words Which speak of nothing more than what we are,

that is, what we really or potentially are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of death, and win the vacant and the vain To n.o.ble raptures; while my voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too-- Theme this but little heard of among men-- The external world is fitted to the mind; etc.

The system of general spiritual education which is both explicitly and implicitly set forth in 'The Prelude,' makes this great autobiographical poem one of the most valuable productions in English Literature; and teachers capable of bringing its informing spirit home to their students (capable by virtue of their own a.s.similation of it), might do great things in the way of a spiritual quickening of their students.

And how much capable mothers might derive from Wordsworth's poetry for the spiritual nurture of their children! Capable mothers are, alas!

comparatively few; but forces, to be noticed further on, are now at work, which are increasing the number of such mothers, and will continue to increase it more and more, as the ideals of a true womanhood are more and more exalted and realized. The kind of regeneration which the world, at present, most needs, will have to be largely induced by woman, and she _will_ induce it according as her true rights, which are involved in her 'distinctive womanhood,' are recognized and granted her, by her not over-generous brother.

Spiritual education is not a matter of abstract instruction. It must be induced on the basis of the concrete and the personal. The spiritual faculties have no affinities for the abstract. Christianity was introduced into the world through the personal and concrete; rather, it _is_ the personal and the concrete, and its arch-enemy has ever been the abstract, in the form of dogma and stark-naked doctrine.

Dogmatism implies materialism. As one advances spiritually, dogma declines with him, in inverse proportion. Christianity is essential being, and not a doctrine, not a body of opinions, not 'a matter of antiquarian pedantry or of historical perspective.' In the great words of the 'De Imitatione Christi,' 'Cui aeternum verb.u.m loquitur, ille a multis opinionibus expeditur' (he to whom the eternal word speaks, is freed from many opinions); and to fit the soul to be spoken to by the eternal word, is the true, the ultimate object of spiritual education.

The permanent, the eternal, that which is alive for evermore, should, indeed, be the object of all education. Phenomena, in themselves, are not educative. A feeding on them alone, if that were possible (man naturally, whatever his condition, seeks other pabulum), would soon result in a general atrophy of all the faculties, intellectual and spiritual. To use the words of St. Vincent de Lerins, which he applied to the Catholic Church,--would that the Church had always made them its controlling principle!--'magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est' (it must be especially seen to, that we hold to that which everywhere, which always, which by all, has been believed).

There is no exclusiveness in the eternal word; it speaks to every one whose ears are open to it; it enters wherever it is not shut out. It speaks through Nature, through every form of Art (which to be art must be a manifestation of it), through Poetry, 'the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,' through Music, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, through all sacred books, and, above all, through sanctified men and women, of the Present and the Past, 'the n.o.ble Living and the n.o.ble Dead.' In the words of Emerson:

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,-- The canticles of love and woe.

The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told In groves of oak or fanes of gold Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.

The kind of books which the young should read, is, of course, an important consideration. If 'a general insight into useful facts' be regarded as the main thing in a child's education, such as 'the royal genealogies of Oviedo, the internal laws of the Burmese empire, by how many feet Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe, what navigable river joins itself to Lara, and what census of the year five was taken at Klagenfurt,' and other matters not having much to do with the advancement of the millennium, why the question is easily settled as to the kind of books a child should be provided with, and be required to learn, and recite; but if some vitality of soul, the indispensable condition of intellectual vitality, in after life, be the aim, then a different kind of books will be needed--such books as will serve to vitalize and guide the instincts, to bring the feelings into a healthful play, and awaken enthusiasm, and thus to prepare the way for the later exercise of the reasoning faculties, and for the comprehension of moral and religious principles. There is a time to _feel_ the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, and a time to regard all these, as far as may be, under intellectual relations. If 'the years that bring the philosophic mind' be antic.i.p.ated in a child's education, it will be likely, by reason of the premature philosophy served out to it, to become a stupid man or woman, with a plentiful lack of both intellect and soul. Upon the closed bud of reason, while it is not yet ready to be unfolded, must be brought to bear the genial warmth of sensibility, sympathy, and enthusiasm; and when it opens in its own good season, it will not be dwarfed nor canker-bitten.

Sensibility, sympathy, enthusiasm, I repeat, are the elements of the atmosphere in which the intellectual, the moral, and the religious nature of a child can alone germinate and healthily grow, and in later years, bloom and shed a wholesome fragrance.

Stories written for the young must be _concrete_ representations of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; in other words, they must be works of art. Says Browning, in 'The Ring and the Book,'

Art may tell a truth Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,

that is, bring what is _implicit_ within the soul, into the right att.i.tude to become _explicit_--bring about a silent adjustment through sympathy induced by the concrete (it cannot be induced by the abstract); in other words, prepare the way for the apprehension of the truth--

do the thing shall breed the thought, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word;

that is, Art, so to speak, is the word made flesh,--_is_ the truth, and, as Art, has nothing directly to do with an explicit presentation of the truth. 'The highest, the only operation of Art, as of Nature,' says Goethe, 'is formation' (Gestaltung).

So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, Beyond mere imagery on the wall,-- So, note by note, bring music from your mind, Deeper than ever the Andante dived,-- So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts, Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.

The greatest moral teachers the world has ever known, have exhibited the least of explicit moralizing. They have embodied their gospels,--clothed them in _circ.u.mstance_,--woven them into a tissue of imagery and incident and, by so doing, have given them that _vitality_ which alone can awaken sympathy, and thus induce a mental preparedness for a reception of the higher truths, and a comprehension of great principles.

A deep sympathy with truth is the important thing: this implies a rectification of the spiritual nature--its harmonization with the const.i.tution of things. A great amount of abstract truth may be lodged in one's brain, and this sympathy may be more or less wanting. To secure it, the 'Word' of the teacher must become flesh,--it must be contemplated in the flesh, living and breathing,--it must be represented as _militant_, subject to accident and antagonism, but a.s.suring men of its unquenchable vitality, its relations.h.i.+p with the divine, through the might of its resistance, and through its final _triumph_, though not necessarily according to earthly standards of the triumphant. There are novels which exhibit a somewhat low ideal of life through the general squaring up of things at the end--the good being rewarded outwardly and the bad punished. But

In the corrupted 'currents of this world, Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, ... but 'tis not so above.

The teachings of Jesus are clothed in circ.u.mstance and imagery which were familiar to all whom he addressed. 'All these things spake Jesus unto the mult.i.tude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them.' To use the words of Archbishop Trench in his 'Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom,' 'In his life and person, the idea and the fact at length kissed each other, and were thenceforward wedded forever.'

The liberal-minded reader of the four records which we have of Christ's life and teachings, must admit that he added little or nothing to the previously existing knowledge of truth in the abstract; he rather caused truth which philosophers and moralists had already intellectually recognized, to be known 'by heart.' He presented it _concretely_, in his own life and in his teachings, and thus worked it into that 'daily bread' for which he commanded us to pray, and which alone will nourish human sympathy and love. In its previous intellectual, abstract form, it did not, and could not, become an element of spiritual life.

In the thirty beautiful little stories in the New Testament, educators of the young, and indeed all educators in the fullest sense, may see the cardinal principle of their calling, namely, that the greatest power of ethical and religious truth can be secured only through the concrete, and the personal, through that which is the truth, and not through an abstract enunciation--through that form which _is_ loved for its own sake; whose beauty is its own excuse for being; and the sense of love and beauty, when awakened, makes all things plain. _Ubi caritas, ibi claritas._

Many who have written books for the young professedly to impart Christian instruction, have least observed the mode exhibited in the teachings of him whom they profess to take as their Great Exemplar.

Their instruction is too explicit. It is presented without a sufficiency of concrete clothing to keep it warm; sometimes in its abstract nakedness. It is thus powerless to awaken the love and sympathy of young hearts.

If the views above expressed are sound, I would say that, in choosing reading matter for the young, special preference should be given to such stories as serve to awaken the imagination, exercise the sympathies, and nourish a lively and joyous enthusiasm. I should wholly exclude explicitly moral and religious stories, and should choose in their stead, stories of human sympathy and sacrifice, heroic endurance, and unconscious virtues (_conscious_ virtue is always weak), fairy tales, and legends gay and sad. A child of healthful, unperverted feelings is averse to moral and religious books, as a cla.s.s. It would rather read about Robinson Crusoe and his faithful man Friday, and it is far better that it should have such preference--far better that it should live, while a child,

in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid,

instead of being prematurely crammed with, to it, lifeless moral and religious principles, 'useful' knowledge, and the sciences. Wholesome to every one would be such 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights' as are expressed by Tennyson:

'Far off, and where the lemon-grove In closest coverture upsprung, The living airs of middle night Died round the bulbul as he sung; Not he: but something which possessed The darkness of the world, delight, Life, anguish, death, immortal love, Ceasing not, mingled, unrepressed, Apart from place, withholding time, But flattering the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.'

A child cannot be made virtuous by maxims. The life which is before it, is not a scheme to be taught, but a drama to be acted.

Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail.

But

What is she, cut from love and faith, But some wild Pallas from the brain Of Demons?

Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first.