Household Education Part 7

The second stage in the Intellectual Education of the Household children, then seems to be that in which the young creatures, having learned to use their own limbs and senses, and acquired the command of speech, begin to use their powers for the acquisition of materials for future thought. They listen, they look about them, they inquire, they read; and, above all, they dream. Life is for them all pictures.

Everything comes to them in pictures. In preparation for the more serious work to come, the parent has chiefly to watch and follow Nature;--to meet the requirements of the child's mind, put the material of knowledge in its way, and furnish it with the arts necessary for the due use of its knowledge and its n.o.bler powers:--the arts of reading, ready writing, and the recording and working of numbers; and the knowledge of the grammar of some one language, at least. Besides this, these best days of his memory should be used for storing up word-knowledge, and technical rules, and, as a luxury after these dry efforts, as much poetry as the pupil is disposed to learn; which will be a good deal, if the selection is, in any degree, left to his own choice: and some portion of it may well be so.

Thus far, here is nothing that may not be supplied in the most homely Household in the land, where there is any value for the human intellect, and any intention to educate the children. It is difficult to say what more could be done in the school-room of a palace. The intellect of the high and low is of the same nature, and developes itself in the same modes. While its training depends on the love and good sense of parents, as in this stage, it depends simply on the quality of the parents whether the children of the palace or of the cottage are the better educated.

"No mystery is here; no special boon For high and not for low; for proudly graced, And not for meek of heart."

CHAPTER XXI.

INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.--THE REASONING FACULTIES.--FEMALE EDUCATION.

The time comes at last,--sooner with one child, later with another,--when the superior faculties begin to show their activity; when the young pupil attempts to reason, and should be helped to reason well.

The preparation for this time ought to have gone on during all the preceding years, in the establishment of a perfect understanding between his parents' minds and his own. He ought to have received nothing but truth from them, in their intellectual, as in all their other intercourse. What I mean is this. From the time he could speak, the child has no doubt asked the Why of everything that interested him. Now, no one knows the ultimate Why of anything whatever; and it is right to say this to the inquirer,--telling him as much as he can understand of the How; and it is but little that the wisest of us know of the How. For instance, the little thing cries out "O! there is a robin!" "A robin!

and what is it doing?" "It is hopping about. It has picked up something.

O! it is a worm. What does it get the worm for?" "To eat it. Robins eat a great many worms." "Why do they eat worms? Why does this robin eat that worm?" "Because it is hungry." No intelligent child will stop here.

He will want to know why the robin does not eat anything rather than worms; why the robin is hungry; and certainly he will sooner or later wonder why there are robins at all. About these latter mysteries, the parent knows no more than the questioner: and he should say so. He may tell something of the how;--how the robin and all other living creatures are impelled to eat; how food gives nourishment; and so on. He may or may not, according to his judgment, give information, as far as he has it himself: but it ought not to be a matter of choice with him whether to put off a child with an unsatisfactory answer, or to declare truthfully his own ignorance. He must never weary of replying "I don't know," if fairly brought to this point, after telling what he does know.

If he tells all that is understood of a tree and its growth, so that he thinks his child cannot possibly have more to ask, he will find there are other questions still to come. "Why are trees green?" If they are not all green, "Why is the red beech red, and the pine black?" "Why does a tree grow, instead of being always tall?" "Why is John Smith handsome while Tom Brown is ugly?" "Why do people exist when they could not tell beforehand whether they should like it or not?" Now, it will not do, if the child's mind is to be fairly dealt with, to give a dogmatical answer; to put off the inquirer with a form of words, or any a.s.surance of anything that is not absolutely known to be true. "I do not know," is the answer which parental fidelity requires. "Does anybody know?" is the next question. "n.o.body." "Shall I ever know?" "I don't think you will: but you can try when you grow up, if you like." Of course, the child determines to try when he is a man: and meantime, he is satisfied for the present. There is an understanding between his parent and himself, which will be of infinite use to him when his time comes for finding out truth for himself by a comparison of abstractions;--that is, by reasoning.

With some abstractions every child becomes early familiar; as the days of the week. Perhaps the first which he is able to use for purposes of reasoning are numbers. They are at least eminently useful as a link between tangible objects and those which are ideal. A child sees on the table that two pins added to two make four pins: and then that a b.u.t.ton and a thimble put down beside a marble and a halfpenny make four things, as well as if they were all of the same sort. He thus receives into his mind the abstract notion of numbers. Whenever by his own thought, or by inquiry of others, he clearly sees that, because two sixes make twelve, four threes must make twelve, he has begun to reason. He has found out a truth by comparing an abstraction with an abstraction: that is, he has begun to reason. Having begun,--having once satisfaction in grasping an invisible truth in this way,--he will be disposed to go on: and I, for one, would allow him to do so, at his own pace. Nothing can be more foolish than to stimulate the reasoning faculties too early: but I do not see why their natural action should be repressed because of a theory that the reasoning faculties should not come into activity till such or such an age. I know how painful such repression is to a thoughtful child, and how useless is the attempt to stop the process, which will only be carried on with less advantage, instead of being put an end to.

I knew a girl of eleven, thoughtful and timid, seldom venturing to ask questions, or to open her mind about what occupied it most,--who, on some unusual incitement to confidence during a summer evening walk, opened a theme of perplexity, to get a solution from a grown-up brother, whom she regarded as able to solve anything. She told him that she could not see how, if G.o.d foreknew everything, and could ordain everything, men could ever be said to sin against him, or be justly punished for anything they did: and then she went on to the other particular of that problem;--how, if G.o.d was all powerful to create happiness, and all good to desire it, there came to be any suffering in the world. Her brother answered her with kindness in his tone, but injudiciously. He told her that that was a very serious question which she was too young to consider yet; and that some years hence would be time enough. She was dissatisfied and hurt;--not from pride; but because she felt it hard to be left in a perplexity from which she fully supposed her brother could relieve her. She felt that if she could ask the question,--thus put in a definite form,--she must be capable of understanding the answer. And so she undoubtedly was. If the brother held the doctrine of free will, he should have replied that he did not know;--that he could not understand the perplexity any more than herself. If he held the necessarian doctrine, he should have imparted it to her; for her question showed that she was capable of receiving it. The end of the matter was that she suffered for years under that reply, never again venturing to propose her difficulty to any one. She worked her way through the soluble half of the question alone at last,--thinking first, and then reading, and then meditating again, till all was clear and settled; and in her mature years she found herself fast anch.o.r.ed on the necessarian doctrine,--rather wondering how she could have been so long in satisfying herself about a matter so clear, but aware that she had found an inestimable gain;--which she might have reposed upon some years earlier, if the natural working of her faculties had been trusted as it might have been.

Our enjoyment of our faculties appears to me to be more proportioned to their quality than their strength:--that, whether any one of us has the reasoning power, or the imagination stronger or weaker than the perceptive and conceptive faculties, he enjoys most the exercise of the higher. Certainly, children whose faculties are developed freely and fairly have an intense relish for reasoning, while the mind remains unwearied. The commonest topics voluntarily chosen are conduct and character; because the most familiar and interesting abstractions are those which are connected with morals. How boys and girls will debate by the hour together about the stoicism of Junius Brutus, and the patriotism of Brutus and Ca.s.sius; and about all the suicides of all Romans, and all the questionable acts of all heroes! The mother is the great resource here, because she is always at hand; and these matters are of such pressing importance to the little people, that they cannot wait till their father comes in, or can give them some of his evening leisure. These topics are good as an exercise of both the moral and intellectual powers: but they do not yield full satisfaction to the reasoning faculty, because they can never be brought to any certain and evident issue. The conclusions of morals are clear enough for practical guidance; but they are not proveable. For the full satisfaction of the reasoning faculties, therefore, children must set to work elsewhere.--They may get something of it out of their lessons in grammar, if they are trusted with the sense of the grammar they are taught: lighting upon an accusative case and a verb in a Latin sentence, they know there must be a nominative: and there it is presently, accordingly. Finding an ablative absolute, they are confident of finding some sort of proposition: and there it is, to their hand. The words on the page before them are as real to the sense as the written numerals on their slates: but behind both there is a working of unseen laws,--independent of the signification of either words or numerals,--whose operation and issue it is a deep-felt pleasure to follow and apprehend. The rules of grammar, and the laws of numbers,--(the rules of arithmetic, in short,)--are abstractions proceeding from abstractions; and their workings bring out a conclusion clear to the pupil's apprehension, and unquestionable. This is all exercise of the reasoning powers; and it is this exercise of those powers, or the use of ear and memory only which makes the difference between a pupil who learns grammar and arithmetic with the understanding or by rote.

I once witnessed a curious instance of the difference between the reasoning pupils of a cla.s.s at school and the learners by rote. The test was, I think, designed by the master to be a test; and it answered his purpose even better than our strenuous exercises in grammar and arithmetic. Our master proposed to give some of us an idea of English composition, and said he would next week explain to us how to set about it. Some of us, however, were all on fire with the idea of writing essays, and were by no means disposed to wait. The next time our master entered the school-room, eight or ten pairs of beseeching eyes were fixed upon him; and he, being a good-natured man, asked what we wished. What we wanted was to be allowed immediately to write an essay on Music. He had no objection; but he asked for some precision in the object of the essay;--proposed that it should be the Uses of Psalmody, or some such topic, which could be treated in the limits of a school theme;--but no; he saw by the faces and manner of the cla.s.s that it must be an essay on Music. I was the youngest of the cla.s.s, who ranged from eleven to sixteen: and I wondered whether the elder ones felt as I did when I saw the little smile at the corners of the mouth, amidst the careful respect of our kind master. I felt that we were somehow doing something very silly, though I could not clearly see what. It was plain enough when we brought up our themes. Our master's respect and kindness never failed: and he now was careful to say that there was much that was true in each essay; but----. We saw the "but" for ourselves, and were ready to sink with shame; for n.o.body had courage to begin to laugh at our folly. Such a ma.s.s of rhapsody and rhodomontade as we presented to our master! Such highflying, incoherent nonsense! Each was pretty well satisfied with her own rhapsody till she heard the seven or nine others read. "Now, perhaps you perceive," our master began: and indeed we saw it all;--the lack of order and object;--the flimsiness,--and our own presumption. We were now more ready to be taught. Some, however, could not yet learn; and others liked this lesson better than any they had ever attempted. This is the difference which induces me to tell the story here. We were taught the parts of a theme, as our master and many others approved and practised them, in sermons and essays: and the nature and connexion of these parts were so clearly pointed out, that on the instant it appeared to me that a sudden light was cast at once on the processes of thought and of composition,--for both of which I had before an indistinct and somewhat oppressive reverence. I saw how the Proposition, the Reason, the Example, the Confirmation, and the Conclusion led out the subject into order and clearness, and, in fact, regularly emptied our minds of what we had to say upon it. From that day till our school was broken up (and my heart nearly broken with it) a year and a half afterwards, the joy of my life was writing themes;--or rather composing them; for the act of writing was terribly irksome. But that which some of us eminently enjoyed was altogether burdensome to others, from the procedure of the task being utterly unintelligible. I suppose their reasoning faculties were yet unawakened,--though they were not so very young. The Proposition they usually wrote down in the words in which our subject was given to us;--the mere t.i.tle of the theme. The Reason was any sort of reason about any affair whatever,--the authors protesting that a reason was a reason any day. The Examples were begged, or copied out of any history book. The Confirmation was omitted, or declared to consist in "the universal experience of mankind,"--whatever the subject might be: and as for the Conclusion, that was easy enough:--it was only to say that for all the reasons given, the author concluded so and so,--in the words of the t.i.tle. This was a case in which it would have been better to wait awhile, till the meaning of the task and its method should dawn upon the minds yet unready. But, for those who were capable, it was a task of great pleasure and privilege; and we loved our master for testing and trusting our faculties in a direction so new to us.

Those studies which require reasoning as a means to a proveable issue are of a high order, as regards both profit and pleasure: and boys and girls will be the better through life for whatever mathematical training their parents can procure for them. Be it little or be it much, they will have reason to be grateful as long as they live for what they can obtain. I mention girls, as well as boys, confident that every person able to see the right, and courageous enough to utter it, will sanction what I say. I must declare that on no subject is more nonsense talked, (as it seems to me) than on that of female education, when restriction is advocated. In works otherwise really good, we find it taken for granted that girls are not to learn the dead languages and mathematics, because they are not to exercise professions where these attainments are wanted; and a little further on we find it said that the chief reason for boys and young men studying these things is to improve the quality of their minds. I suppose none of us will doubt that everything possible should be done to improve the quality of the mind of every human being.--If it is said that the female brain is incapable of studies of an abstract nature,--that is not true: for there are many instances of women who have been good mathematicians, and good cla.s.sical scholars.

The plea is indeed nonsense on the face of it; for the brain which will learn French will learn Greek; the brain which enjoys arithmetic is capable of mathematics.--If it is said that women are light-minded and superficial, the obvious answer is that their minds should be the more carefully sobered by grave studies, and the acquisition of exact knowledge.--If it is said that their vocation in life does not require these kinds of knowledge,--that is giving up the main plea for the pursuit of them by boys;--that it improves the quality of their minds.--If it is said that such studies unfit women for their proper occupations,--that again is untrue. Men do not attend the less to their professional business, their counting-house or their shop, for having their minds enlarged and enriched, and their faculties strengthened by sound and various knowledge; nor do women on that account neglect the work-basket, the market, the dairy and the kitchen. If it be true that women are made for these domestic occupations, then of course they will be fond of them. They will be so fond of what comes most naturally to them that no book-study (if really not congenial to their minds) will draw them off from their homely duties. For my part, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that the most ignorant women I have known have been the worst housekeepers; and that the most learned women I have known have been among the best,--wherever they have been early taught and trained to household business, as every woman ought to be. A woman of superior mind knows better than an ignorant one what to require of her servants, how to deal with trades-people, and how to economise time: she is more clear-sighted about the best ways of doing things; has a richer mind with which to animate all about her, and to solace her own spirit in the midst of her labours. If n.o.body doubts the difference in pleasantness of having to do with a silly and narrow-minded woman and with one who is intelligent and enlightened, it must be clear that the more intelligence and enlightenment there is, the better. One of the best housekeepers I know,--a simple-minded, affectionate-hearted woman, whose table is always fit for a prince to sit down to, whose house is always neat and elegant, and whose small income yields the greatest amount of comfort, is one of the most learned women ever heard of. When she was a little girl, she was sitting sewing in the window-seat while her brother was receiving his first lesson in mathematics from his tutor. She listened, and was delighted with what she heard; and when both left the room, she seized upon the Euclid that lay on the table, ran up to her room, went over the lesson, and laid the volume where it was before. Every day after this, she sat st.i.tching away and listening, in like manner, and going over the lesson afterwards, till one day she let out the secret. Her brother could not answer a question which was put to him two or three times; and, without thinking of anything else, she popped out the answer. The tutor was surprised, and after she had told the simple truth, she was permitted to make what she could of Euclid. Some time after, she spoke confidentially to a friend of the family,--a scientific professor,--asking him, with much hesitation and many blushes, whether he thought it was wrong for a woman to learn Latin. "Certainly not," he said; "provided she does not neglect any duty for it.--But why do you want to learn Latin?" She wanted to study Newton's Principia: and the professor thought this a very good reason.

Before she was grown into a woman, she had mastered the Principia of Newton. And now, the great globe on which we live is to her a book in which she reads the choice secrets of nature; and to her the last known wonders of the sky are disclosed: and if there is a home more graced with accomplishments, and more filled with comforts, I do not know such an one. Will anybody say that this woman would have been in any way better without her learning?--while we may confidently say that she would have been much less happy.

As for women not wanting learning, or superior intellectual training, that is more than any one should undertake to say in our day. In former times, it was understood that every woman, (except domestic servants) was maintained by her father, brother or husband; but it is not so now.

The footing of women is changed, and it will change more. Formerly, every woman was destined to be married; and it was almost a matter of course that she would be: so that the only occupation thought of for a woman was keeping her husband's house, and being a wife and mother. It is not so now. From a variety of causes, there is less and less marriage among the middle cla.s.ses of our country; and much of the marriage that there is does not take place till middle life. A mult.i.tude of women have to maintain themselves who would never have dreamed of such a thing a hundred years ago. This is not the place for a discussion whether this is a good thing for women or a bad one; or for a lamentation that the occupations by which women might maintain themselves are so few; and of those few, so many engrossed by men. This is not the place for a speculation as to whether women are to grow into a condition of self-maintenance, and their dependence for support upon father, brother and husband to become only occasional. With these considerations, interesting as they are, we have no business at this moment. What we have to think of is the necessity,--in all justice, in all honour, in all humanity, in all prudence,--that every girl's faculties should be made the most of, as carefully as boys'. While so many women are no longer sheltered, and protected, and supported, in safety from the world (as people used to say) every woman ought to be fitted to take care of herself. Every woman ought to have that justice done to her faculties that she may possess herself in all the strength and clearness of an exercised and enlightened mind, and may have at command, for her subsistence, as much intellectual power and as many resources as education can furnish her with. Let us hear nothing of her being shut out, because she is a woman, from any study that she is capable of pursuing: and if one kind of cultivation is more carefully attended to than another, let it be the discipline and exercise of the reasoning faculties. From the simplest rules of arithmetic let her go on, as her brother does, as far into the depths of science, and up to the heights of philosophy as her powers and opportunities permit; and it will certainly be found that the more she becomes a reasoning creature, the more reasonable, disciplined and docile she will be: the more she knows of the value of knowledge and of all other things, the more diligent she will be;--the more sensible of duty,--the more interested in occupations,--the more womanly. This is only coming round to the points we started from; that every human being is to be made as perfect as possible: and that this must be done through the most complete development of all the faculties.

CHAPTER XXII.

INTELLECTUAL TRAINING.--THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTIES.

The young mind is very well entertained for a time by the exercise of its reasoning powers,--if, instead of being baffled, they are encouraged and trained. But, there is a higher set of faculties still which begin to work ere long; and usually in such proportion to the reasoning powers as would seem to indicate some connexion between them. Or it may be that the moral fervour which gives great advantage to the reasoning powers is exactly that which is essential to the development of the highest of human faculties,--the Imagination. Certain it is that the children who most patiently and earnestly search out the reasons of things,--either looking deep into causes, or following them high up to consequences, are those who most strongly manifest the first stirrings of the heavenly power which raises them highest in the ranks of being known to exist.

They may, or they may not, have shown a power of Fancy before this time.

They may, or they may not, have manifested a strong conceptive faculty; a power of forming images of objects already well known or clearly described; but, if they can so think of unseen things, so compare them and connect them, as to bring truth out at last,--if, in short, they reflect and reason well, the probability is that they will prove to have a good portion of the higher faculty of Imagination. At least, we may be sure that a child of high imaginative faculty has good reasoning powers.

During the first exercise of the reasoning powers a child may, and probably will, become thoughtful. He will look grave at times, and be buried in reflection for awhile: but this gravity does not make him less cheerful; and when he has done thinking about the particular thing his head was full of, he is as merry as ever. But a little later, and his thoughtfulness becomes something quite different from this. If there is some mingling of melancholy with it, the parents must not be uneasy. It is all natural, and therefore right. He is beginning to see and to feel his position in the universe; to see and to feel that by the powers within him he is connected with all that exists, and can conceive of all that may exist: and his new consciousness gives a light to his eye and a meaning to his countenance that were never seen there before. While he was an infant, he was much like any other young animal for his thoughtless and unconscious enjoyment of all the good things that were strewed in his daily path. Then, he began to see deeper,--into the reasons of things, and their connexions; and now he had become higher than other young animals,--for they cannot perceive the truths of numbers, or discover by thought anything not before known in any science. But now, he has become conscious of himself; he can contemplate himself as he can contemplate any other object of thought; and he is occupied in connecting his own thoughts,--his own mind--with every object of thought. It is upon his consciousness and his thoughts united that his imaginative power has to act. By it, he sees everything in a new light, and feels everything with a new depth: and though he often finds this a glorious pleasure, he is sometimes much oppressed by it: and then comes the kind of gentle melancholy before referred to.

See the difference, to the child of dull imagination, or of an age too young for it, and the child superior in years or in faculty,--when they contemplate Nature, or Human Life, or anything whatever;--when they read the History of England, or Conversations on Chemistry, or Shakspere's Plays, or anything you please. Show them the sky as you are coming home at night. The one will learn to know the constellations as easily perhaps as the other, and will show somebody else the next night which is the Great Bear, and which is Orion: but the duller or younger child sees nothing more than what is before its eyes; or, if told that all those stars are worlds, believes it without seeing or feeling anything beyond the mere fact as conveyed in the words. But at the same moment the faculty of Imagination in the other child is kindling up within him,--and kindling all his other powers. He sees, by his mind, far far beyond the bounds of human measurement and the human sight;--sees the universe full of rolling suns; worlds for ever moving in their circles, and never clas.h.i.+ng; worlds of which there are myriads vaster than our own globe. All this he sees, not by gazing at the sky; for he sees it better when his head is on his pillow,--or when his hands are busy with some mechanical employment, the next day. If he feels how, with all his busy mind and swelling heart, and whole world of ideas, he is yet but an atom in this great universe, almost too small for notice, is not this enough to make him thoughtful? and if there is a tinge of melancholy in his seriousness, may it not be allowed for? Again, in reading the History of England,--the duller or younger child may remember the kings, and the great men, and the great battles, and the great famine and plague; and perhaps almost all the events told: and, if he has some considerable conceptive faculty, he may have pictures in his mind of the ancient Britons, and then of King Alfred and his people; and then of the Normans coming over and landing, and establis.h.i.+ng themselves in our island. But the superior child sees all this, and very much more. The minds of all the people he reads of are as manifest to him as the events of their lives. He feels the wild valour of the old Britons while he reads of them; and his soul melts in reverence, and grief, and pity for King Alfred; and then it glows with courage; and then it grows calm with faith as he sees the courage and faith that were in King Alfred.

And so on, through the whole history. And even more than this. He sees more than the individuals of whom he reads could see of themselves. The kingdom and the nation are ideas in his mind, as vivid as his idea of the personages he reads of. He feels when the nation is rising or falling; rejoices when a great and good man,--a sage, or a patriot, or a martyr--arises to bless his race, and burns with indignation and grief when the wicked have their own way. Is there not something here to make him thoughtful? and if there is a tinge of melancholy in his seriousness, may it not be allowed for? Suppose these two to read "Conversations on Chemistry," or "Scientific Dialogues,"--they will see and feel as differently as in the former cases. The inferior child will find some entertainment, and particularly if allowed to try chemical experiments: but these experiments will be to him a sort of cookery;--a putting things together, in order to succeed in producing some result,--amusing or pretty. His smattering of Chemistry is to him now a plaything, whatever it may become when he is wiser. But how different is it with the elder one, whose awakened imagination now silently enters with him into every chamber of his own mind and every scene of nature--opening his vision with a divine touch, and showing him everything in its vastness and its inner truth! He does not want to try chemical experiments. He would rather think quietly of the great agents of Nature, and see them, with the eye of his mind, for ever at their work;--Heat, spreading through all things, and even hiding in the polar ice;--Electricity, darting and streaming through all substances, and being the life of all that lives; and the flowing together and mixing of three airs to make air that we can breathe,--this flowing together and mixing having gone on ever since there were breathing creatures on the globe;--these great images, and those of the forces of the waters, the pressure of the atmosphere, the velocities of motion,--the mechanical action, in short, of the great forces of Nature, occupy and move him more than any outward methods of proof of what has been laid open to him. Or, if he tries experiments, the thing that impresses him is something far higher than amus.e.m.e.nt:--it is wonder and awe, and perhaps delight that he can put his hand in among the forces of Nature, and take his share, and set Nature to work for him. Is it any wonder that his heart throbs, and his eyes swim or kindle, and that he had rather think than speak? And may he not be left undisturbed at such a moment, till his mind takes a lower tone?

It is this faculty which has produced the highest benefits to the human race that it has ever enjoyed. The highest order of men who have lived are those in whom the power of Imagination has been the strongest, the most disciplined, and the most elevated. The n.o.blest gifts that have been given to men are the ideas which have proceeded from such minds. It is this order of mind alone that creates. Others may discover, and adapt, and improve, and establish: but it is the imaginative order of mankind that creates,--whether it be the majestic steam-engine, or the immortal picture, or the divine poem. It should be a joyful thing to parents,--though it must be a very serious one,--to see clear tokens in any child of the development of this faculty,--the faculty of seeing things invisible,--of "seeing things that are not as though they were."

If it is only of average strength, it is a true blessing, inasmuch as it enn.o.bles the views and the life of the individual, if its benefit extends no further in a direct manner. If it appears in any marked degree, the parents' hearts cannot but be elated, though they may be anxious. It is a sign of natural n.o.bility,--of a privilege higher than hereditary or acquired honour: and greater than a monarch can bestow.

Through it, if it be rightly trained, its possessor must enjoy the blessings of largeness of heart and wealth of mind, and probably of being a benefactor, more or less, to his race.

Now,--what are the tokens of this endowment? and how should it be treated?

When a young person's views extend beyond the objects immediately presented to him, it is naturally seen in his countenance, manner, speech and habits. The questions he asks, the books he reads, his remarks on what he reads or hears, all show whether his mind is deeply employed. He is probably a great reader; and if he has been religiously brought up, he probably becomes intensely religious about the time of the development of his higher faculties.--He must be treated with great consideration and tenderness. If he is of an open disposition, apt to tell of his day dreams and aspirations, there must be no ridicule,--no disrespect from any part of the household. There ought to be none; for it is pretty certain that any day dreams and aspirations of his are more worthy of respect than any ridicule with which they can be visited. The way to strengthen and discipline his mind is not, as we have often said already, to repress any of its faculties, but to employ them well. In no case is this management more important than in the present.

Now, in this important period of youthful life, it is the greatest possible blessing if the son or daughter be on terms of perfect confidence with the mother. It is a kind of new life to a mother who has kept her mind and heart active and warm amidst her trials and cares, to enter into sympathy with the aspirations and imaginations of her ripening children. She has a keen enjoyment in the revival of her own young feelings and ideas;--some of the n.o.blest she has known: and things which might appear extravagant at another time or from other persons, will be n.o.ble and animating as coming from those whose minds,--minds which she has watched from their first movements,--are now rapidly opening into comparative maturity. To her, then, the son or daughter need not fear to speak freely and openly. To her they may pour out their admiration of Nature, their wonder at the sublimities of science; their speculations upon character; their soundings in the abysses of life and death; their glorious dreams of what they will be and do. The more she sympathises with them in their intellectual pleasures and tendencies, the more will her example tell upon them as a conscientious doer of the small duties of life: and thus she may silently and unconsciously obviate one of the chief dangers of this period of her children's lives.

If they see that the mother who glows with the warmth of their emotions, and goes abroad through the universe hand in hand, as we may say, with them, to note and enjoy all that is mighty and beautiful, all that is heroic and sweet,--is yet as punctual in her everyday duty as the merest plodder and worldling, they will take shame to themselves for any reluctance that they feel to commonplace ideas and what seems to them drudgery. Full confidence and sympathy are the first requisites of the treatment of this period.

But the wise parent will have laid up material for the employment of the imaginative faculty, long before it can appear in any strength. The child will have been familiarised with a high and n.o.ble order of ideas; and especially of moral ideas: for the picturesque or scientific will be pretty sure to make themselves duly appreciated by the awakened ideal faculties. Whatever the parent can tell of heroic conduct, of lofty character, of the grave crises and affecting changes of human life, will be so much material laid in for the virtuous and salutary use of those awakening faculties which might otherwise be occupied in selfishness and other mischief. Let the mind be abundantly ministered to. This may be done in the most homely households where there is any n.o.bility of mind.

Every parent has known some person who is n.o.ble and worthy of contemplation for character and conduct. Every parent can tell some moving or striking tale of a human lot. To all, the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, are open for contemplation. In every household, there is the Bible: and in the houses of all who read this, there is, no doubt, Milton, on the shelf beside the Bible. With these parents have means enough for the education of their children's highest faculties. In these they hold a greater treasure than any other that can be found in royal abodes: and the kingdom of Nature is a field which their children have free license to rove with the highest. Let them have and enjoy these treasures abundantly. Let them read all tales of n.o.ble adventure that can be obtained for them;--of the heroes that have struggled through Polar ice and burning African sands; that have sailed on past the horizon of hope in the discovery of new continents, and have succeeded through faith, courage and patience. Let the reading of good fiction be permitted, where the desire is strong. Some of the highest interests of English history have been opened to the present generation by the novels of Scott, as to many a preceding one by the Plays of Shakspere. My own opinion is that no harm is done, but much good, by an early reading of fiction of a high order: and no one can question its being better than leaving the craving mind to feed upon itself,--its own dreams of vanity or other selfishness,--or to seek an insufficient nourishment from books of a lower order. The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work. Let its working be enn.o.bled, and not debased, by the material afforded to it.

In the parents' sympathy must be included forbearance; forbearance with the uncertainty of temper and spirits, the extravagance of ideas, the absurd ambition, or fanaticism or, (as it is generally called) "romance"

which show themselves more or less, on the opening of a strong imaginative faculty. It should be remembered that the young creature is half-living in a new world; and that the difficulty of reconciling this beloved new world with the familiar old one is naturally very trying to one who is just entering upon the struggles of the mind and of life. He cannot reconcile the world and its ways and its people with the ideals which are presenting themselves to him; and he becomes, for a time, irritable, or scornful, or depressed. One will be fanatical, for a time, and sleep on the boards, and make and keep a vow never to smile. Another will be discontented, and apparently ungrateful, for a time, in the idea that he might be a hero if he had certain advantages which are not given him. Another looks down already on all his neighbours on account of the great deeds he is to do by and by: and all are convinced,--every youth and maiden of them all,--that n.o.body can enter into their feelings,--n.o.body understand their minds,--n.o.body conceive of emotions and aspirations like theirs. At the moment, this is likely to be true; for their ideas and emotions are vast and stirring, beyond their own power to express; and it can scarcely happen that any one is at hand, just at the right season, to receive their out-pourings, and give them credit for more than they can tell.--With all the consequences of these new movements of the mind, the parents must have forbearance,--even to the point (if it must be) of witnessing an intimacy with some young companion, not very wise, who is the depository of more confidence than is offered to those who should be nearest and dearest. These waywardnesses and follies may have their day, and prove after all to have been, in their way, wholesome discipline. Every waywardness brings its smart; and every folly leaves its sting of shame in the mind that is high enough to manifest any considerable power of imagination. They will punish and cure themselves; and probably in a short time. Nature may be trusted here, as everywhere. If we have patience to let her work, without hindrance and without degradation, she will justify our confidence at last. Give her free scope,--remove out of her way everything that is low and sordid, and needlessly irritating, and minister to her everything that is pure and gentle, and n.o.ble and true, and she will produce a glorious work. In the wildest flights of haughty and undisciplined imagination, the young aspirant will take heed enough to the beauty and dignity of a lowly, and dutiful and benignant walk in life, to come down and wors.h.i.+p it when cruder visions have pa.s.sed away.

It is only to wait, in gentleness and cheerfulness, and the wild rhapsodist, or insolent fanatic will work his way through his snares into a new world of filial, as well as other duty, and, without being less of a poet, but because he is more of one, will be a better son and brother and neighbour,--making his life his highest poem.

It will be said that we have here, in treating of the training of the Intellectual faculties, recurred to the department of morals. And this is true. No part of human nature can work in isolation; and when we treat of any function by itself, it is for the convenience of our understandings, and not as a following of nature. No intellectual faculty can act independently of the moral; and the higher the faculties, the closer we find their interaction; till we arrive at the fact that Veneration, Benevolence, Hope, Conscientiousness and Firmness cannot act to perfection except in company with a vigorous faculty of Imagination, and strong Reflective powers: and again, that the Reasoning and Imaginative powers can never work to their fullest capacity unless the highest of the moral powers are as active as themselves. In all true poetry, there is a tacit appeal to the sanction of Conscience, and Veneration and Benevolence are the heavenly lights which rise upon the scene: while, on the other hand, no Reverence is so deep, Benevolence so pure, as those which are enriched by the profoundest Thought, and refined and exalted by the n.o.blest Idealism.

These truths bring us to a practical consideration as serious as any which our minds can receive and dwell upon. My own sense of it is so strong, and so confirmed by the experience of a life, that I feel that if I had the utmost power of thought and language that were ever possessed by the human being, I could do no justice to it:--that the only means of improving the _morale_ to the utmost is by elevating the ideal of the individual. It is well to improve the conduct, and satisfy the conscience of the child by calling upon its resolution to amend its faults in detail,--to control its evil tempers, and overcome its indolence and laxity: but this is a temporary method, insufficient for its ultimate needs. The strength of resolution fails when the season of youth is past, or is employed on other objects; and it is rare, as we all know, to see faults amended, and bad habits overcome in mature years: and then, if improvement proceeds, radically and continuously, it is by the mind being placed under good influences, operating both powerfully and continuously. Of good influences, the most powerful and continuous is the presence in the mind of a lofty ideal. This is the great central fire which is always fed by the material it draws to itself, and which can hardly be extinguished. When the whole mind is possessed with the image of the G.o.dlike, ever growing with the expansion of the intelligence, and ever kindling with the glow of the affections, every pa.s.sion is consumed, every weakness grows into the opposite strength; and the entire force of the moral life, set free from the exclusive care of the details of conduct, and from the incessant anxiety of self-regards, is at liberty to actuate the whole harmonious being in its now necessary pursuit of the highest moral beauty it can conceive of. To this G.o.dlike inspiration, strong and lofty powers of Thought and Imagination are essential: and if parents desire that their children should be what they are made to be,--"but a little lower than the angels,"--they must cherish these powers as the highest sources of moral inspiration.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CARE OF THE HABITS.--IMPORTANCE OF HABIT.

The importance of HABIT is an old subject; as old as any in morals. For thousands of years, moralists and philosophers have written and preached about it; and everybody is convinced by what they say. But I much doubt whether, even yet, many penetrate into the depth of the matter.

Everybody sees, and everybody has felt the difficulty of breaking bad habits, and that there is no security to virtue so strong as long-formed good habits: but my observation compels me to think that scarcely anybody is aware of the whole truth;--that every human being (except such as are born defective) might be made perfectly good if his parents were wise enough to do all that might be done by the power of Habit.

This seems a bold thing to say, but I am convinced that it is true.

I am aware that we cannot expect to see any parents wise enough to know how to make the fullest use of this power: and perhaps there are none, even of the tenderest parents, who can keep themselves up to an incessant vigilance over their infants, without any carelessness or flagging. Sometimes they are busy; sometimes they are tired; sometimes they are disheartened. They are not perfectly wise and good themselves; and therefore they must sink below the mark, more or less. But I am sure it would be a great help to their strength, and vigilance, and heartiness, if they could clearly see how easily their children may be made anything they please.

The great points, for conscientious parents, are to be fully convinced of the supreme importance of the formation of Habits, and to begin early enough. If they will begin early enough, they will be sure to be convinced. But a pretty strong conviction may be had beforehand, by observation of the history and character of mankind.

Habits of Belief are the most important of all: and everybody thinks so: and of all Beliefs those which relate to Duty,--those which are called religious--are the highest. Now look round the world, and see how many individuals you can find who have inquired out for themselves what they think they believe. As for nations,--a nation of independent thinkers is a thing never dreamed of. Such a spectacle as that has never been seen in the wildest visions of the most sanguine of poets and moralists. I have travelled among heathens, Mohammedans, Jews, and many kinds of Christians; and I have found them all believing what they were taught, before they could reason, to hold as sacred truth; and this was exactly what their teachers were themselves taught to suppose (for one cannot call this Belief) in the same manner. The Red Indian, on the sh.o.r.es of the American lakes, and on the wide prairie, is brought up, from the time he can understand language at all, to believe that there is a Great Spirit who lives far away over the waters or beyond the forests, who is jealous and angry if the people do not offer to him whatever they like best;--who forbids them to touch whatever he wants for himself;--who has favourites among their warriors, and is most pleased with those who most torture their bodies, to show their bravery. The Indian believes in a good many inferior spirits, who do him good or harm, and mingle more in his affairs than the Great Spirit does. This is the Indian way of thinking; and every Indian child grows up to think in the same way, upon the whole, though one may be more sure than another of one or another part of the doctrine. No one of the whole tribe asks for any proof that things are so. The early habit of taking these doctrines for granted, as something solemn and sacred, which somebody must have known for true a long time ago, prevents any one but a thoughtful person here and there ever inquiring whether there is really any knowledge existing about the matter at all, or only superst.i.tion. Then, there are the Jews. Not one Jew in ten thousand ceases to be a Jew in religion; and n.o.body out of the Jewish body ever gets to think as they do;--to hold their doctrines, and their traditions, and their superst.i.tions. Next, in order of time, come the Christians. There are many bodies of Christians, differing as much from one another as if they held faiths called by different names. There are the Christians of the Greek Church, wors.h.i.+pping many G.o.ds under the name of saints;--some thinking it blasphemy not to adore the Emperor of Russia next to G.o.d, and some paying their first homage to the Virgin with Three Hands. There are the Christians of the Romish Church, who are shocked at the Emperor of Russia for not being one of them; and shocked at the Protestants for not wors.h.i.+pping the bones and toe-nails of _their_ saints. And there are the Protestant Christians, who are shocked at the superst.i.tions of the Romish Church on the one hand, and at the doctrines of every Protestant sect but their own, on the other. Then come the Mohammedans, who think it exactly as impious in all Christians not to receive Mohammed, their prophet, whom they think a greater than Christ, as the Christians think it impious in the Jews not to receive Christ, whom they hold to be greater than Moses. The children of all these mult.i.tudes, (except in an extremely rare case, here and there) receive what they are early told, as their parents received it before them; and no one supposes that any one of those vast mult.i.tudes would think and feel as he does on matters of religion if he were not early habituated to think and feel as he does. Can we imagine any one of ourselves, concluding for ourselves, for instance, that the most solemn and sacred of human duties was to go through a set of prostrations and gestures, like those of the Mohammedans, five times a day as long as we live, unless we were taught, from early infancy, to consider such acts to be in the highest degree virtuous? Can we imagine ourselves thinking, as the Mohammedans do, that every man who does not go through this set of gestures five times every day, is careless about goodness altogether,--is an Infidel (which is the Mohammedan name for a Christian)--is wicked, and must be cast into h.e.l.l?

More persons in the world believe this than believe in the G.o.ds of the Red Indian, and the faith of the Jews, and the doctrines of all bodies of Christians put together. Yet it is incredible that any man would so believe,--so undoubtingly, so solemnly, if he had not been habituated to such a belief from the very beginning. If the beliefs of the majority of mankind are thus dependant upon habit,--if their faith and their views of duty and happiness,--(the most important of all views) have this origin, how is it possible to overrate the importance of Habit? If, turning away from the Greek Christians and the Mohammedans, we contemplate in our imagination a large sect or nation who should have been habituated, from the first dawning of intelligence, to regard perfect goodness as the most sacred and solemn and beautiful thing that the human mind can conceive of,--as a thing the most interesting and important to every human being,--and a thing within the reach of every one of us, is it conceivable that such a people would not be the most virtuous ever seen on earth? Let it not be said that children are so taught,--that such is the habit of their minds in our Christian country: for alas! it is very much otherwise. They are occasionally told, indeed, that Christ desired his followers to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect; but this is not the aim steadily and cheerfully set before any child, as a hopeful enterprise,--as the best thing in the world, and as a thing which must be done. No child sees that this object is what his parents are living for, in comparative disregard of everything else; and that this is what he ought to live for, and is expected certainly to accomplish, according to his means. While he is told, and pretty often, that the best thing in the world is to be good, he is habituated, by what he sees and hears almost all day long, to believe that it is a hopeless thing to become perfectly good, and that everybody tries, in fact, for something else, with more zeal and expectation;--to get knowledge, to get reputation, to get employment and comfort,--to get all manner of pleasant things by their own desires and exertions, while they trust that some power will make them good, without that unremitting desire and exertion on their parts which alone can make them so.

I have before me the Remarks of a conscientious and affectionate father on the essential and unlimited power of Habit in the rearing of Children;--a truth which he had heard of all his life, but never fairly estimated till he had employed his energies on the education of his own family. I do not know who he is; but I see by the pamphlet before me[A]

that he is earnest and intelligent, and qualified to speak from experience. Earnest he must be, for it appears that it was his constant habit, during the infancy of his children, to rise in the night, to see that they were well, and sleeping peacefully: and he invariably went with them to school, and met them at the school door, to bring them home again,--more than a mile,--though he was a busy man,--obliged to work for their bread and his own. This earnest observer says "I now repeat the opinion that every child born, not insane or idiotic, might, to a moral certainty, be trained to be a gentle, a benevolent, and a pious adult. Of the correctness of this opinion I have long ceased to have any doubt. Holding this opinion to be positively correct, I next held that the universal belief of its correctness would soon lead to an amount of improvement in the several conditions of human existence that would exceed even my own sanguine expectations. The encouragement which this belief would give to parents would bring into active and affectionate exertion an amount of attention and devotion to the training of the infant feelings and propensities of their offspring, such as heretofore has never been exercised, or perhaps ever imagined. I would, therefore, spread this belief among all mankind, by every means in my power to employ, and with it my opinions of the kind of teaching, or rather training, by which such blessed results might be produced. To describe this kind of teaching, or training, is not at present in my power to do, to a due extent. I will but give one brief rule, namely, 'What you wish a child to be, be that to the child.' And I would impress upon the mind of the mother, the nurse, or other teacher, the importance of so training each desire or propensity as to bring it as early as possible into habitual obedience to the dictates of the religious and moral sentiments,--those sentiments being guided by the enlightened intellect of such mother, nurse, or teacher. These teachers should be aware of the fact that the mind of a child is continually acquiring habits of thought, as its limbs are habits of action, whether by the spontaneous and unguided efforts of its own mind and body, or by following the training of those having the care of it. They should be continually improving themselves in the art of so guiding the infant dispositions, and the exercises and actions of their charge as to form the disposition _as early as possible_; and this course of training would effectually preserve the child _from every approach to the formation of any other habits than those inculcated by the teacher_."--(Remarks, &c., pp. 11, 12).

[A] "Remarks on the Advantages of early Training and Management of Children." By a Colonist. Ollivier, 59, Pall-Mall.

Next to the Beliefs established by early habit, come the propensities.