"Thanks for your letter, old man, but you forgot to enclose the cheque."
Why did I forget the cheque? Because I did not want to pay up. Consciously I did want to pay, for I wrote out the cheque all right, but my unconscious did not want to pay, and it was my unconscious that made me slip the cheque under the blotter.
Last summer I was invited to spend the week-end with some people at Stanmore. I did not want to go; a previous week-end with them had been most boring. However, I reluctantly consented to go out on the Saturday morning. When Saturday morning came I was not very much surprised to find that I had forgotten to put out my boots to be cleaned the night before.
"It looks as if I weren't keen on this trip," I said to myself.
I went down to Baker Street and got into the train. We stopped at many stations, and after an hour's journey I began to wonder what was wrong. I asked another man in the compartment when we were due at Stanmore, and he looked surprised.
"Why," he said, "you're on the wrong line; you ought to have changed atHarrow."
I got out at the next station and found that I had an hour to wait for the return train to Harrow. As I sat on the platform I took from my pocket my host's letter.
"Remember," it ran, "to change at Harrow," and the words were underlined.
I arrived four hours late . . . and spent a pleasant week-end.
One night I was dining out in London, and I told my host the new theory of forgetting.
"That's all bunkum," he said. "Why, there is a flower growing at the front door there, and I can never remember the name of it. I am fond of flowers and never have any difficulty in remembering their names as a rule."
"What flower is it?" I asked.
He tried to recall it, and had to give it up.
"It's the joke of the family," said his wife. "He can never remember the name Begonia."
"Begonia!" cried my host, "that's the name! But surely you don't mean to tell me that I want to forget it? Why should I?"
"It may be associated with something unpleasant in your life," I said.
"Nonsense!" he laughed. "The name conveys nothing to me."
We began to talk about other things. Ten minutes later my host suddenly exclaimed:
"I've got it!"
"What?" I asked.
"That Begonia business. When I began business as a chartered accountant over twenty years ago, the first books I had to audit were the books of a company calling itself The Begonia Furnishing Company. I glanced through the books and soon concluded that they were swindlers. I worried over that case for a week; you see it was my first case, and I felt a little superstitious about it. However, at the end of a week I sent the books back saying that I couldn't see my way to undertake the auditing. I've never given them a thought since."
I explained the mechanisms to him. The whole idea of this Begonia Company was so painful to him that he repressed it, that is, drove it down into the unconscious. Twenty years later he was unconsciously afraid to recall the name of the flower, because the name might have brought back the painful memories of the questionable books.
On Friday night during question time one man got up.
"Why is it, then," he asked, "that I cannot forget the painful time when my wife died?"
I explained that a big thing like that cannot be forgotten, but pointed out that in a case like that the tendency is to forget little things in connection with the big pain. I told him of a case I had myself known. A lady of my acquaintance lived for a few years in Glasgow; then she moved to Edinburgh, where she lived for almost thirty years. Now she lives in London. When she talks of her old home in Edinburgh she always says: "When we were in Glasgow." Invariably she makes this mistake. The reason is almost certainly this: just before she left Edinburgh she lost the one she loved most in life. She says: "When we were in Glasgow" because the word Edinburgh would at once bring back the painful memories connected with her loved one's death.
When I was teaching in Hampstead one of my pupils, a boy of sixteen, came to me one day.
"That's all rot, what you say about wanting to forget things," he said."I went and left my walking-stick in a bus yesterday."
"Were you tired of it?" I asked.
"Tired of it?" he said indignantly. "Why, it was a beauty, a silver-topped cane, got it from mother on my birthday. That proves your theory is all wrong."
"Tell me about yesterday," I said.
"Well, I was going to a match at lord's, and it looked rather dull, so mother told me I'd better take a gamp. I said it wasn't going to rain, and took my cane, but I had just got on the top of a bus when down came the rain in bucketfuls and I tell you I was wet to the skin."
"So you did mean to leave your cane behind?" I asked, with a smile.
"But I tell you I didn't!"
"You did, all the same. You kicked yourself because you hadn't taken your mother's advice and brought a gamp. You deliberately left your cane behind you because it had proved useless."
I must add that I failed to convince him.
Connected with forgetting are what Freud calls symptomatic acts. I leave my stick or gloves behind when I am calling at a house: I conclude that I want to go back there. I go to dinner at the Thomsons', and at their front door I absent-mindedly take out my latch-key. This may mean that I feel at home there; on the other hand, it may mean that I wish I were at home. It is dangerous to dogmatise about the unconscious.
I was sitting one night with Wilson, an old college friend of mine. We talked of old times, and I remarked that he had been very lucky in his lodgings during his college course.
"Yes," he said, "I was in the same digs all the five years. She was a ripping landlady was Mrs.—Mrs.—Good Lord! I've forgotten her name!"
He tried to recall the name, but had to give it up. Two hours later, as he rose to go, he exclaimed: "I remember the name now! Mrs. Watson!"
"What are your associations to the name Watson?" I asked.
"Associations? What do you mean?"
"What's the first thing that comes into your head in connection with the name?" I asked.
He made an effort to concentrate his mind, then suddenly he laughed shortly.
"Good Lord!" he cried, "that's my wife's name!"
I felt that I could not very well ask him anything further, but I suspected that Wilson and his wife were not getting on well together.
* * * * *
Macdonald's self-government scheme has fizzled out. Yesterday his scholars besought him to return to the old way of authority.
"They were fed up with looking after themselves," explained Mac to me. "They were always trying each other for misdemeanours, and they got sick of it."
I tried to explain to Mac why his attempt had failed. Self-government always fails unless it is complete self-government. Mac was the director and guide; it was he who decided the time-table; it was he who rang the bell and decided the length of the intervals. The children had nothing to do but to keep themselves in order, hence they came to spy on each other. All their energies were directed to penal measures. Their meeting degenerated into a police court. That was inevitable; Mac, by laying down all the laws, prevented their using their creative energy on things and ideas. Naturally they put all the energy they had into the only thing open to them—the trial of offenders. In short, they were employing energy in destruction when they ought to have been employing it in construction. Mac seems indifferent now. "The thing is unworkable," he says.
* * * * *
Duncan came over to-night. I decided to let him do most of the talking, and he did it well. He has been doing a lot of Regional Geography, and I learned much from his conversation. As the evening wore on he became very affable, and he treated me with the greatest kindness. When Mac was seeing him out Duncan remarked to him: "That chap Neill isn't such a bad fellow after all." Now that I have shown Duncan that I am his inferior in Geography he will listen to me with less irritation.
After supper I went over to see Dauvit. His shop was crowded.Conversation was going slowly, and Dauvit seemed to welcome my entrance.
"Man, Dominie," he said, "I am very glad to see ye, cos the smith here has been tellin' his usual lees aboot the ten pund troot that he nearly landed in the Kernet."
"I doot ye dreamt it, smith," said the foreman from Hillend. "I ken for mysell that the biggest troot I ever catched were in my dreams."
"Dreams is just a curran blethers," said the smith in scorn.
Dauvit looked at him thoughtfully.
"That's a very ignorant remark, smith," he said gravely. "There's naebody kens what a dream is. Some o' thae spiritualist lads say that when ye are asleep yer spirit goes to the next plane, and that maks yer dreams."
The smith laughed loudly.
"Oh, Dauvit! Why, man, I dreamed last nicht that I was sittin' we a great muckle pint o' beer in my hand. Do ye mean to tell me that there is beer in heaven?"
There was a laugh at Dauvit's expense, but the laugh turned against the smith when Dauvit remarked dryly: "I didna mention heaven; I said the next plane, and onybody that kens you, smith, kens that the plane you're gaein' to is the doon plane."
"Naturally, a muckle pint o' beer will be the exact thing ye need doon there," he added.
"It's my opeenion," said old John Peters, "that dreams is just like a motor car withoot the driver. Or like a schule withoot the mester; the bairns just run aboot whaur they like, nae control as ye micht say. Weel, that's jest what happens in dreams; the mester is sleepin' and the bairns do all sorts o' mad things."
"Aye, man, John," said Dauvit, who seemed to be struck with the idea, "there's maybe something in that. Just as bairns when they get free do a' the things they're no meant to do, we do the same things in oor dreams. Goad, but I've done some awfu' things in my dreams!"
Here Jake Tosh the roadman began to cough, and Jake's cough always means that he is about to say something.
"You're just a lot o' haverin' craturs," he said with conviction. "If ye had ony sense ye wud ken that the dream is just cheese and tripe for supper."
Dauvit's eyes twinkled.
"And does the cheese wander frae yer stammick up to yer heid, Jake?"
"I wudna go so far as that," said Jake seriously, "but what I say is that a' the different parts o' the body work thegether. If the stammick has to work a' nicht to digest the cheese, the heid has to keep workin' at the same rate, and that's why ye dream."
"Aye, man, Jake," said Dauvit, "it's a bonny theory, but wud ye jest tell me exactly what work yer toes and fingers and hair are doin' a' nicht to keep upsides wi' yer stammick?"
Jake dismissed the question with an airy wave of his hand.
"Onybody kens that," he said; "they grow. Yer hair and yer nails grow at nichts, and that's why ye need a shave in the mornin'!"
"What if you don't dream at all, Jake?" I asked.
"Ye're needin' some grub," said Jake shortly.
On thinking it over I feel that Jake's theory throws some light onJung's theory of the libido.
This morning I had a letter from a friend in London asking when I am going to set up my "Crank School" in London. I began to think about the word Crank. What is a Crank? Usually the name is applied to people who wear long hair, eat vegetarian diet, wear sandals . . . or something in that line. A Crank therefore is someone who differs from the crowd, and I am led to conclude that the Crank not only differs from the crowd but is usually ahead of the crowd.
According to Sir Martin Conway the crowd has no head; it can only feel. Hence it comes that the main feature of a crowd is its emotion. When we study the street crowd, the mob, this fact is evident; but can we say the same of other crowds . . . the Public School crowd, the Church, the Miners, the Doctors? I think so. The anger that Alec Waugh's book,The Loom of Youth, aroused in the public schools was not a thought-out anger; it came from the public school emotion. So with vivisection; the doctors' rage at the anti-vivisectionists is not an intellectual rage; it is simply a professional emotion. Just before I left London I happened one night to be in a company of men who were arguing about Re-incarnation. I had no special views on the subject, but I soon found myself supporting the crowd that was sceptical about Re-incarnation. The reason was that the leader of the anti-reincarnation crowd happened to be a man called Neill. It is highly probable that if two rag-and-bone men got into a scrap in a public house they would support each other simply out of a professional crowd emotion.
That the crowd has no head is evident when we read the popular papers or see the popular films. The most successful papers are those that touch the passions of the mob. I proved this one week last spring. Judges were beginning to introduce the "cat" for criminals, as a means to stem the crime wave. I sat down and wrote an article on the subject, pointing out that this was a going back to the days of barbarism when lunatics were whipped behind the cart's tail. I made a strong plea for the psychological treatment of the criminal, basing my plea on the fact that crime is the result of unconscious workings of the mind, and stating that instead of sending a poor man to penal servitude we ought to analyse his mind and cure him of his anti-social tendencies.
I thought it a jolly good article, and when a prominent Sunday paper returned the manuscript to me I was surprised. My surprise left me on the following Sunday when the same paper blared forth an article by Horatio Bottomley. His title was: "Wanted—the Cat!"
My article was more thoughtful, more humane, more scientific. Why, then, was it suppressed? The answer is simple: it did not fit in with the passions of the crowd. It becomes clear why our best public men—editors, cabinet ministers, publicists are not great thinkers. They must keep in touch with the crowd; they must express the emotions of the crowd.
The attitude of the crowd to the anti-crowd person, the Crank, is never one of contemptuous indifference. It is always distinctly hostile. If I travel by tube from Hampstead to Piccadilly without a hat the other travellers stare at me with mild hostility. Why? Conway, inThe Crowd in Peace and War, an excellent book, says that this hostility comes from fear. A crowd is always afraid of another crowd, because the only force that can destroy a crowd is a rival crowd. Every individual who differs from the herd is suspect because he is perhaps the nucleus of a rival crowd. That is why the world always crucifies its Christs.
The Crank School, then, is a school where anti-crowd people send their children. It is the schoolpar excellenceof the Intelligentsia. The tendency of every Crank School is to exaggerate the difference between the crank and the crowd; hence its adoption of an ideal and its concomitant crazes. I cannot for the life of me see why ideals are associated with vegetarianism, long hair, Grecian dress, and sandals, just as I cannot see why art should attach itself to huge bow-ties, long hair, and foot-long cigarette holders.
The Crank School holds up an ideal. It plasters its walls with busts of Walt Whitman and Blake; it hangs bad reproductions of Botticelli round the walls; it sings songs to Freedom; it rhapsodises about Beethoven and Bach. The children of the Crank Schools are, I rejoice to say, not cranks. They leave the boredom of Bach and seek the jazz record on the gramophone; they ignore the pictures of Whitman and Blake and studyThe Picture ShoworFunny Bits. Many of them think more highly of Charlie Chaplin than of William Shakespeare.
I say again that I rejoice in this; it serves the Crank School people jolly well right. I cannot see by what right educators force what they consider good taste down the children's throats. That is a return to the old way of authority, of treating the child's mind as a blank slate. If the Crank Schools are to improve, they must drop their high moral purpose tone and come down to earth. They must realise that Charlie Chaplin andJohn Bullhave their place in education just as Shakespeare and Beethoven have their place. We do not want to turn out cranks who will form a new superior crowd; we want to turn out men and women who will readily join the conventional crowd and help it to reach better ideals.
This question of good taste is a sore one with me. I think it fatal to impose good taste on any child; the child must form his own taste. I know that it is possible to cultivate good taste and to become a very superior cultivated person, but I know that the human, erring, vulgar, music-hall, Charlie Chaplin part of such a person's make-up is not annihilated; it is merely repressed into the unconscious.
I have a theory that each of us has a definite amount of human nature, some of it high, some of it low, or, to phrase it differently, some of it animal, some of it spiritual. We can repress one part, and then we become either a saint or a sinner; the better way is to be both saint and sinner, to look life straight in the face, condemning no one, judging no one.
* * * * *
Macdonald was re-readingA Dominie Dismissedto-night, and he looked up and said: "Look here, you've got an awful lot of swear-words in this book!"
"That," I said, "has a cause, Mac. They aren't really swear-words; the world has grown out of being shocked at a 'damn,' but I am willing to admit that there are more damns and hells than is usual. They are symptomatic; they date back to my early days when swearing was a crime punishable with the strap. They are simply symbols of my freedom. Most bad language is from a like cause. When you foozle on the first tee there is no earthy reason why you should say 'Hell' rather than 'Onions'! But if onions had been taboo when you were a child you would find yourself using the word as a swear. The curse word is the link that joins your foozle with the nursery; whenever you curse you regress, that is, you go back to the infantile."
"But," said Mac, "you don't mean to say that if swearing were permitted to children that they wouldn't curse when they were grown up?"
"I don't think they would," I said. "Nor would there be any unprintable stories if we had a frank sex education. It's a sad fact, Mac, but nine-tenths of humour is due to early suppression and repression."
"Seems to me," said Mac with a laugh, "that if everybody were psycho-analysed, the world would be a pretty dull place."
* * * * *
A few days ago I found a pot of light paint in Mac's workshop, and, impelled by heaven only knows what unconscious process, I painted my bicycle blue. This morning, the paint being dry, I rode forth into an unsympathetic world. Women came to their doors to stare at my machine, and as they stared they broke into laughter. When I reached the village of Cordyke the school was coming out, and I was greeted with a howl of derision. I thought it a good instance of crowd psychology; I was different from the crowd, and I evoked laughter and derision.
After cycling a few miles, I came to an old man breaking stones at the bottom of a hill. On my approaching he threw down his hammer and turned to stare at my cycle. I dismounted.
"Almichty me!" he said with surprise. "That's a michty colour!"
"It's unusual," I said, as I lit a cigarette.
He fumbled for his clay pipe.
"I've seen black anes, and I wance saw a silver-plated ane, but I never heard tell o' a blue bike afore," he said. "Did you pent it?"
I acknowledged that it was my very own handiwork.
"But," he said in puzzled tones, "what was yer idea?" and he stared at it again. "A michty colour that!"
I threw my bike down on the grass and sat down on the cairn.
"Between you and me," I said mysteriously, "I had to paint it blue."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Yea, man!"
"Government orders," I said carelessly, and began to throw stones at a tree trunk at the other side of the road.
"Government orders?" He looked very much surprised.
"Yes," I said airily. "You see, it's like this. The Coalition Government isn't very firmly placed these days, and, well, I'm an agent for it. Of course, you know that it is really a Tory government, and my bike, as it were, invites the electorate to vote True Blue."
"Yea, man! I thocht that you was maybe ane o' thae temperance lads fraeAmericky."
"Ah!" I said solemnly, "that reminds me; Pussyfoot tried to induce me to make my tour a sort of joint thing. He suggested that I might carry on my Tory work, and at the same time take part in the blue ribbon campaign. Of course I refused."
"Of coorse," he nodded.
"Officially I am doing Coalition work," I continued conversationally, "but I have motives of my own."
"You don't say!"
"Oh, yes. I am a great admirer of Lord Fisher and the Blue Water school, sometimes spoken of as the Blue Funk school. Again, I find that the Great War has left many people in the blues, and by means of homeopathy I cure 'em; I mean to say that they come to their doors and laugh at my blue bike. My blue dispels their blues."
The old man did not seem to follow this.
"Of course," I went on, "the Bluebells of Scotland have something to do with my selection of the colour."
"A verra nice sang," he commented.
"An excellent song! Then there is the well-known phrase 'Once in a Blue Moon,' and innumerable songs about the pale moonlight. Also I once knew a man who had the blue devils."
I tried to think of other phases of blueness, but my stock was almost exhausted.
"Of course," I added, "I am not forgetting the other blues, the Oxford blues, Reckitt's Blue, Blue Coupons, and—and—I'm afraid I can't think of any other blues just at the moment."
The old man drew the back of his hand over his mouth.
"There's the 'Blue Bonnets' up at the tap o' the brae," he suggested thirstily.
"Good idea!" I cried, "come on!" and together we climbed the brae.
* * * * *
A friend of mine in London has written me asking if I will write an article on Co-education for an educational journal, in which she is interested. I replied: "I can't see where the problem comes in; to a Scot co-education is not a thing that has to be supported by argument; he accepts it as he accepts the law of gravitation."
I wonder why English people are so afraid of co-education. To this day schools like Bedales, King Alfred's, Harpenden, and Arundale are reckoned as crank schools. The great middle-class of England believes in segregation. Even Dr. Ernest Jones, the most prominent Freudian psycho-analyst in England, appears to be afraid of it.
I can only conjecture that Jones agrees with the middle and upper classes in associating sex with sin. I have never tried to think out my reasons for believing in co-education; possibly the true reason is that having grown up in a co-education atmosphere, co-education has become a part of me just as my Scots accent has. In other words, I may have a co-education complex. If that is so, my arguments will be mere rationalisations, but I give them for what they are worth.
We are all born with a strong sex instinct, and this instinct must find expression in some way. We know that the sex energy can be sublimated, that is, raised to a higher power. For instance, the creative sex urge may be directed to the making of a bookcase, or the making of a century at cricket. But I know of no evidence to prove that all the instinct can be sublimated. An adolescent may spend his days at craftwork and games, but he will have erotic dreams at nights. All the drawing and painting in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the face of a pretty girl.
In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other. The unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the same sex. I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman. In our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of auto-eroticism.
In a co-education school the sex impulse is directed to one of the opposite sex. This attachment is nearly always a romantic ideal attachment. I have never known a case that went the length of kissing; among little children at a rural school, yes; at the age of seven I kissed my first sweetheart; but among adolescents I find that neither the boy nor the girl has the courage to kiss. Theirs is a sublimated courtship; they never use the word Love; they talk about "liking So-and-so."
That at many co-education schools this romantic attachment is more or less an underground affair is due to the moral attitude of teachers. They pride themselves on the beautiful sexless attachments of their pupils; they give moral lectures on the subject of kissing, and naturally every pupil in school at once becomes painfully self-conscious on the subject. The truth is that many co-educationists do not in their hearts believe in the system; they still see sin in sex.
To be a thorough success the co-education school must include sex education in its curriculum. The children of the most advanced parents seldom get it at home, and they come to school with the old attitude to sex. Sex education does not mean telling children where babies come from; it should dwell mostly on the psychological side of the question. The child ought to learn the truth about its sex instinct. Most important of all, the child who has indulged in auto-eroticism ought to be helped to get rid of his or her sense of guilt. This sense of guilt is the primary evil of self-abuse; abolish it, and the child is on the way to a self-cure.
How many children can go to their teacher and make confession of sex troubles? Very few. It is the teachers' fault; they set themselves up as moralists, and a moralist is a positive danger to any child.
Not long ago I was addressing a meeting of teachers in south London. At question time a woman challenged me.
"You have condemned moralists," she said; "do you mean to say that you would never teach a child the difference between right and wrong?"
"Never," I answered, "for I do not know what is right and what is wrong."
"Then I think you ought not to be a teacher," she said.
"I know what is right for me, and wrong for me," I went on to explain, "but I do not know what is right and wrong for you. Nor do I presume to know what is right or wrong for a child."
I was pleasingly surprised to find that the meeting roared approval of my reply.
* * * * *
Macdonald had to attend a funeral to-day, and he asked me if I would take his classes for an hour. I gladly agreed.
"Give them a lesson on psychology," he said; "it will maybe improve their behaviour."
I went over to the school at two o'clock, and Mac introduced me, although I had already made friends with most of the children in the playground and the fields. Mac then went away and I sat down at his desk.
"We'll have a talk," I said, "just a little friendly talk between you and me. I want to hear your opinions on some things."
They looked at me with interest.
"Why," I said, "why do you sit quiet in school?"
Andrew Smith put up his hand.
"Please, sir, 'cause if we don't the mester gies us the strap."
"A very sound reason, too," I commented. "And now I want to ask you why you sometimes want to throw papers or slate-pencils about the room."
"Please, sir, we never do that," said little Jeannie Simpson.
"The mester wud punish us," said another girl.
"But," I cried, "surely one of you has thrown things about the room?"
Tom Murray, the bad boy of the school (according to Mac), put up his hand.
"Please, sir, I did it once, but the mester licked me."
"Why did you do it, Tom?"
Tom thought hard.
"I didna like the lesson," he said simply.
I then went on further.
"Now I want you all to think this out: was Tom being selfish when he threw paper, or was he unselfish?"
Everyone, Tom included, judged that the paper-throwing was a selfish act.
"I don't agree," I said. "Tom was trying to do a service to the others; you were all bored by a lesson, and Tom stepped in and took your attention. Unfortunately he also attracted the attention of Mr. Macdonald, but that has nothing to do with Tom's reason for doing it. Tom was the most unselfish of the lot of you; he showed more good than any of you."
"The mester didna think that!" said Tom, with a grin.
Peter Wallace carefully rolled a paper pellet and threw it at Tom.
"Now," I said with a smile, "let's think this out; why did Peter throw that pellet just now?"
"Because the class is bored," said a little girl, and there was a good laugh at my expense.
"Righto!" I laughed, "shall we do something else?" but the class shouted"No!" and I proceeded.
"Peter, do tell us why you threw that pellet."
"For fun," said Peter, blushing and smiling.
"He did it so's the class wud look at him," said Tom Murray, and Peter hid his diminished head.
"A wise answer, Tom," I said; "but we are all like that; we all like to be looked at. Who is the best at arithmetic?"
"Willie Broon," said the class, and Willie Broon cocked his head proudly.
"And who is the best fighter?"
"Tom Murray," answered the boys, and one little chap added: "Tom cud fecht Willie Broon wi' one hand."
Tom tried to look modest.
I went round the class and with one exception every child had at least one branch of life in which he or she found a sense of superiority. The exception was Geordie Wylie, a small lad of thirteen with a white face and a starved appearance. The class were unanimous in declaring that Geordie had no talent.
"He canna even spit far enough," said one boy.
Geordie's embarrassment made me change the subject quickly, but I made up my mind to have a talk with him later.
Some of the reasons for individual pride were strange. Jake Tosh's feeling of superiority lay in the circumstance that his father had laid out a gamekeeper while poaching. Jock Wilson had once found a shilling; another boy had seen "fower swine stickit a' in wan day;" another could smoke a pipe of Bogie Roll without sickening (but I had to promise not to tell the Mester). The girls seemed to find their superiority mostly in lessons, although a few were proud of their needle-work.
I then went on to ask them what their highest ambition in life was. The boys showed less imagination than the girls. Six of them wanted to be ploughmen like their fathers. To a townsman this might appear to be a very modest ambition, but to a boy it means power and position; to drive a pair of horses tandem fashion as they do on the East Coast, with the tracer prancing on the braes; that is what being a ploughman means to a village lad. One boy wanted to be an engineer, another a clerk ("'cos he doesna need to tak' aff his jaicket to work!"), another a soldier.
"Not a single teacher!" I said.
"We're no clever enough," said Tom Murray.
I turned to the girls.
"Now, let's see what ambition you have," I said hopefully. The result was good; three teachers, two nurses, one typist, one lady doctor, one . . . lady. This was Maggie Clark. She just wanted to be like one of thae ladies in the picters with a motor car.
"And husband?" I asked.
"No, I dinna want a man, but I wud like a lot of bairns," she said, and there was a snigger from the boys who had got their sex education from the ploughmen at the Brig of evenings.
Another girl remarked that Maggie's ambition was a selfish one.
"But are you not all selfish?" I asked.
The class indignantly denied it.
"Right," I said, "what do you say to a composition exercise?"
They obediently got out their composition books, but I told them that my exercise was an easy one. I tore up a few pages into slips and distributed them.
"Now," I said, "suppose I give you five pounds to do what you like with. Write down what you would do with it, fold the paper, and hand it in to me."
They eagerly agreed, and at the end of five minutes I had a hatful of slips. I then drew a line down the centre of the blackboard. On one side I wrote the word Selfish; on the other Unselfish. The class groaned and laughed.
"Now," I said cheerfully, "this will prove whether the class is unselfish or not," and I unfolded the first slip.
"But you'll say we are selfish!" said a boy.
"I have nothing to do with it," I said; "you are to decide by vote.First person . . . 'I would buy a bicycle': selfish or unselfish?"
"Selfish!" roared the class, and I put a mark in the first column.
"Next paper . . . 'Scooter, knife, and the rest on ice-cream.'"
"Selfish!" and I put down another mark.
"Next: . . . 'Buy a pair of boots' . . . selfish or unselfish?"
The class had to stop and think here.
"Selfish!" said a few.
"Unselfish," said others, "'cos he wud be helpin' his mother."
"Then we'll vote on it," I said, and by a majority of two the act was declared to be unselfish.
We then had a run of knives, tops, candy, cycles, and no vote was necessary. Then came a puzzler.
"I would send every penny to the starving babies of Germany."
"Unselfish!" cried the class in one voice. I was just about to put the mark in the unselfish column when a boy said: "That's selfish, cos she'd feel proud of being so—so unselfish."
"How do you know it is a she?" I asked.
"'Cause I ken it's Jean Wilson," he answered promptly; "she has took a reid face."
There followed a breezy debate on Jean's act.
"It is selfish," said Mary, "because when you do a kind action you feel pleased with yourself, and it was selfish because if it hadna pleased her she wud never ha' done it."
I asked for a vote and to my astonishment the act was declared selfish by a majority of three. I suspect that conventional Hun Hatred had something to do with the voting.
The voting over I totted up the marks.
"You have judged yourselves," I said, "and according to your own showing you as a class are 87 per cent. selfish and 13 per cent. unselfish."
This essay in composition was not original; I got the idea from HomerLane, who claimed that it was the best introduction to school psychology."It is the best way to make children think of their own behaviour," hesaid, and my experiment has shown this.
When Mac came back I said to him; "You've got a fine lot of bairns, Mac."
"Had you any difficulty?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, I half thought they would try to pull your leg, especially a boy like Tom Murray. He is a most difficult chap, you know."
"Tom's a saint," I said; "every child is a saint if you treat him as an equal. No, I had no difficulty, but I want you to send over Geordie Wylie to me this afternoon. There is something wrong with that boy; he has no ambition and he has one of the worst inferiority complexes I have ever struck. I want to have a quiet talk with him."
Mac promised, and at three o'clock Geordie came over to the schoolhouse.I took him into the parlour, and he sat nervously on the edge of a chair.
"Tell me about yourself, Geordie," I said, but he did not answer.
"Do you keep rabbits?"
"Aye."
"What kind?"
"Twa Himalayas and a half Patty."
"Keep doos?"
"No."
It was like drawing blood from a milestone.
"What do you do when you go home at nights?"
It was a long difficult task to get anything out of him. The only fact of value I got was that he was a great reader of Wild West stories. I asked him to come to me again, and he said he would.
To-night I asked Mac about him.
"He's a dreamer," said Mac, "and he's lazy. I am always strapping him for inattention. He's not a manly boy, never plays games, always stands in a corner of the playground."
"Does he ever fight?" I asked.
"He's a great coward, but there's one queer thing about him; when any boy challenges him to fight he goes white about the gills but he always fights . . . and gets licked."
"Mac," I said, "will you do me a favour? Don't whack him again; it is the worst treatment you can give him. He is a poor wee chap, and he is badly in need of real help."
"All right," said the kindly Mac, "I'll try not to touch him, but he irritates me many a time."
* * * * *
I had Geordie for an hour this morning. He was taciturn at first, but later he talked freely. He is very much afraid of his father, and he weeps when his father scolds him. This makes the father angrier and he calls Geordie a lassie, a greetin' lassie. This jeer wounds the boy deeply. He is afraid in the dark. He told me that he was puzzled about one thing; when he goes for his milk at night he is never afraid on the outward journey, but when he leaves the dairy to come home he is always in terror. I asked him what he was afraid of and he told me that he always imagined that there was a man in a cheese-cutter cap waiting to murder him.
"What is a cheese-cutter?" I asked.
"It is a bonnet with a big snout, something like a railway porter's. My father's a porter and he has ane."
Evidently the man he is afraid of is his father. This may account for his lack of fear when he is walking from his home to the dairy. Then he is leaving his father; when he starts to return he is going back to his father and is afraid.
I asked him about his fights with other boys. He always feared a fight but he went through with it so that the other boys should not call him a coward. Naturally he always lost the battle; he fought with a divided mind; while his less imaginative opponent thought only of hitting and winning, Geordie was picturing the end of the fight.
I asked him if he had a sweetheart, and he blushed deeply. He told me that he often took fancies for girls, but they would not have him. Frank Murray always cut him out; Frank was a big hefty lad and the girls like the beefy manly boy.
He does much day-dreaming, phantasying it is called in analysis. His dreams always take the form of conquests; in his day-dream he is the best fighter in the school, the best scholar, the most loved of the girls. His night dreams are often terrifying, and he has more than once dreamt that his father and Macdonald were dead. He finds compensation for his weaknesses in his day-dreams and his reading. He likes tales of heroes who always kill the villians and carry off the heroines.
It is difficult to know what to do in a case like this. The best way would be to change the boy's environment, but that is out of the question. Even then the early fears would go with him; he would transfer his father-complex to another man.
I tried to explain to Mac the condition of Geordie. The boy is all bottled up; his energy should be going into play and work, but instead it is regressing, going back to early ways of adaptation to environment.
"But what can I do with him?" asked Mac.
"Give him your love," I said. "He fears you now, and your attitude to him makes him worse. You must never punish him again, Mac."
"That's all very well," said Mac ruefully, "but what am I to do? SupposeTom Murray and he talk during a lesson, am I to whack Tom and allowGeordie to get off?"
"Chuck punishment altogether," I said. "You don't need it; it is always the resort of a weak teacher."
"I couldn't do without it," he said.
"All right then," I said wearily, "but I want you to realise that your punishments are making Geordie a cripple for life."
* * * * *
I went down and had a talk with Geordie's father. He was not very pleasant about it; indeed he was almost unpleasant.
"There's nothing wrong wi' the laddie," he said aggressively. "He's a wee bit lassie-like and he has no pluck."
Here Geordie entered the kitchen, and his father turned on him harshly.
"Started to yer lessons yet?" he demanded.
Geordie muttered something about having had to feed his rabbits.
"I'll rabbit ye! Get yer books oot this minute!" and Geordie crept to a corner and rummaged among some old clothes for his school-bag.
I tried to be as amiable as I could, and avoided controversy. I soon saw that father and mother were not pulling well together, and I suspected that the father's harshness to Geordie was often a weapon to wound the fond mother. I saw that nothing I could say would do any good, and I took my departure.
Later I went to see Dauvit, and found him alone. I asked him to tell me about the Wylies.
"Tarn Wylie is wan o' the stupidest men in a ten mile radius," said Dauvit. "But he's no stupid whaur money is concerned; they tell me that he drinks aboot half his week's wages, and his puir wife has to suffer. That laddie o' theirs, he was born afore the marriage, and they tell me that Tarn wud never ha' married her if he hadna been fell drunk the nicht he put in the banns."
This case of poor Geordie shows what a complexity there is in human affairs. His father has a mental conflict, and he drinks so that he may get away from reality. The father's drinking and the son's reading of romances are fundamentally the same thing; each is trying to get away from a reality he dare not face. No treatment of Geordie could be satisfactory unless at the same time the parents were being treated.
Carrotty Broon, one of my old scholars, came to Dauvit's shop to-night, and he talked about his pigeons . . . his doos he calls them. He keeps a pigeon loft of homers, and he spends a considerable amount in training them.
"Some fowk think," he said, "that a homer will flee hame if ye throw it up five hunder miles awa."
"I've read of flights of seven hundred miles," I said.
Carrotty Broon chuckled.
"I mind o' a homer I had," he went on. "He was a beauty, a reid chequer. His father had flown frae London to Glasgow, and his mither was a flier too. Weel, I took him doon to Monibreck on my bike, and let him off. I never saw him again; five mile, and he cudna find his way hame!"
"He must ha' been shot," said Dauvit, "for thae homers find their way hame by instinct."
"Na, na, Dauvit," said Broon, "they flee by sicht. When ye train a homer ye tak it a mile the first day, syne three miles, syne maybe seven, ten, twenty, fifty, and so on. Send the purest bred homer fower mile without trainin' and ye'll never see him again."
Carrotty Broon told us many interesting things about doos and their ways. We listened to him because he was an authority and we knew little about the subject.
"The only thing I ken aboot doos," said Dauvit with a laugh, "is that when I was a laddie auld Peter Smith and John Wylie keepit homers and they were aye trying compeetitions in fleein'. John was gaein' to London for his summer holiday, and so him and Peter made a bargain that they wud flee twa homers from London. Weel, John he got to London, and he thocht to himsell that seein' they had a bet o' twa pund on the race, he wud mak sure o' winnin', and so what does he do but tak a pair o' shears and cut the wing o' Peter's doo.
"When John cam hame after a fortnight's trip he met auld Peter at the station.
"'Weel, Peter,' says he, 'wha won the race?'
"'You,' said Peter; 'your doo cam hame the next day, but mine only got hame this mornin'. And it has corns on its feet like tatties.'"
* * * * *
To-day was Macdonald's Inspection Day, and at dinner time he brought over Mr. J. F. Mackenzie, H.M.I.S., a middle-aged man and Mr. L. P. Smart, assistant I.S., a cheery youth fresh from Oxford. When inspectors dine with the village dominie they never mention the word education. These two talked a lot, and all their conversation was about mountain-climbing in Switzerland. They swopped long prosy yarns about dull incidents, and I was very much bored. So was Mac, but he pretended to be interested, but then he was to see them again, and I wasn't . . . at least I prayed that I might not. After a time I began to feel that I was being left out of the conversation, and I waited until Mackenzie paused for a breath.
"Switzerland is very beautiful," I remarked, "but you should see theAndes."
Mackenzie looked at me coldly.
"I haven't been to South America," he said.
"Same here," said I cheerfully, "but I remember seeing pictures of them in the geography book at school."
Mackenzie looked at me more coldly than before. I don't think he liked me, and when the younger man chuckled Mackenzie glared at him. Smart had a sense of humour.
"I'm afraid we have been boring you," he said to me with a smile.
"I'd rather listen to you two talking education," I confessed.
Mackenzie waved the suggestion away.
"I leave education behind when I walk out of the school," he said in grand manner. "Most excellent rhubarb, Mrs. Macdonald. Home grown?" And then we had ten minutes of garden products versus shop greens. I admit that this inspector had a genius for small talk. We dismissed greens and I led the conversation to hens and ducks. Mackenzie did not know much about them, and he confirmed my opinion of his genius for small talk by saying: "Buff Orpingtons! They are named after Orpington in Kent. I remember staying a night there before I went to Switzerland . . ." and the dirty dog took the conversation back to his mountain climbing.
I made a gesture to the younger man and got him out into the garden.
"Why does he waste precious time talking about cabbages and drearySwiss inns?" I asked.
Smart laughed shortly.
"You know how rich folk talk at table when the servants are present?"
I nodded.
"Well, that's the Chief's attitude to teachers; he never says anything of any importance whatever."
"But why?"
"He is of the old school. He has been inspecting schools for forty years. In the olden days an inspector was a sort of Almighty; teachers quaked before him because with a stroke of his pen he could reduce their money grant. To this day the old man treats teachers as a king treats his subjects—with kindness but with distance."
"Has he any views on education?" I asked.
Smart shook his head.
"None, but he has heaps of views on instruction and discipline. By the way, he thinks that Macdonald's discipline is very good."
"And you?"
"I think it rotten," he said ruefully, "but what can I do? A junior inspector is a nobody; if he has any views of his own he has to pocket them. I would chuck out all this discipline rot and go in for the Montessori stunt. Take my tip and never accept an inspectorship."
"I won't," I said hastily.
I liked Smart, and I wish we had more of his stamp in the inspectorate.
When we returned to the dining-room Mackenzie looked at me with interest.
"I didn't know that you were theDominie's Logman till Mr. Macdonald told me two minutes ago," he said. "I am delighted to meet you. I enjoyed your book very much indeed. Very amusing."
He was quite affable now. Writing a book gives a man a certain standing. I fancy it is the dignity of print that does it, and we all have the print superstition. I find myself accepting statements in books, whereas if someone said the same things to me over a dinner-table I should refute them with scorn. "If it is inJohn Bullit is so!" Mr. Bottomley is a sound psychologist.
When they were departing I said to Smart: "Yes, he's very amiable and all that, but I am jolly glad I had Frank Michie and not him as my chief inspector when I wrote myLog."
Smart laughed.
"My dear chap, Mackenzie would have let you run your school in your own way."
"But," I cried, "he doesn't believe in freedom!"
"He doesn't, but don't you see that he simply couldn't have jumped on you? He would have thought you either a lunatic or a genius, and he would have feared to condemn you in case you might turn out to be the latter. I know an art critic in London, and, believe me, the poor devil lives in terror lest he should damn the work of a new Augustus John. The Futurists aren't flourishing on their merits; they are flourishing because the critics are in a holy funk to condemn them in case they might be artists after all."
I want to meet Smart again. I like his style.
* * * * *
I am indeed a Dominie in Doubt. What is education striving after? I cannot say, for education is life and what the aim of life is no one knows. Psycho-analysis can clear up a life; it can release bottled up energy, but it cannot say how the released energy is to be used. The analyst cannot advise, because no man can tell another how to live his life. Freud clears up the past, but he cannot clear up the future.
Is there such a thing as Re-incarnation? I wonder. Am I living the life that my past lives on earth fitted me for? If so analysis is wrong. If I am suffering from a severe neurosis it is because I earned this punishment in my past lives, and Freud has no right to cure me. He is interfering with the plans of the Almighty. If, as I have heard a Theosophist declare, the children in the slums are miserable because they failed to learn their lesson in previous lives, then the people who try to abolish slums are all wrong. I think my Theosophist would argue that the charitable person is growing in grace, thereby rising above his previous lives. And thus one soul helps another to rise to perfection. It may be, and I hope it is so, for then life would have a meaning. Pain and war would then be less terrible, for they would be but incidents in the eternal unfolding of perfection.
Yet I find myself doubting. If I am William Shakespeare born again I do not know it, and I am left in doubt as to whether I may not have been Charles Peace instead. Possibly I was both.
Then there is psychical research. I have been to a medium and have heard things that all the psycho-analysis in the world cannot account for. I want to believe that the dead can speak to us, but where are the dead? I have read Sir Oliver Lodge'sRaymond, and the description of the next world given there. Frankly I don't fancy it, and I have no desire to go there.
How then can I attempt to educate children when the ultimate solution of life is denied me? I can only stand by and give them freedom to unfold. I do not know whither they are going, but that is all the more a reason why I ought not to try to guide their footsteps. This is the final argument for the abolition of authority. We may beat and break a horse because we selfishly require a horse's service, and according to the accepted view a horse has no immortal soul. We dare not beat and break a child, for a child is going to an end that we cannot know.
I like the Theosophist schools, although I do not like all Theosophists. Some of them seem to be living the higher life consciously, and repressing their lower natures. Most of them do not smoke or drink or eat meat or swear or go to music-halls. That may be living on a higher plane, but it is not living fully. Still, in many ways they are broad-minded. In their schools they do not force Theosophy down the children's throats; they allow a great amount of freedom, but their schools are not free schools. There is a definite attempt to mould character chiefly by insisting on good taste. I am quite sure that no head-master of a Theosophical School would take his children to see a Charlie Chaplin film. Charlie is not obviously living the higher life; he stands for the vulgar side of life; he picks up girls and gets drunk (in the play) and is sea-sick and very vulgar about soda-water.
I find myself insisting on the inclusion of Charlie in any scheme of education because no one ought to be taught to be shocked at sea-sickness and soda-water squirting. Charlie to me is the antidote to the higher-plane crowd; he and his kind are as essential as Shelley. I admit that reading Shelley is a higher kind of pleasure than watching "Champion Charlie," but no human being can safely live on the higher plane, and no child wants to. Education must deal withalllife; a higher plane diet will produce hot-house plants, beautiful perhaps, but delicate and artificial.
* * * * *
Old Willie Murray the cobbler had been bed-ridden for over a year, and when I dropped into Dauvit's shop this morning Mary Rickart was telling Dauvit that his old master was dead.
"Aye, Dauvit," she was saying when I entered, "I'm no the kind that speaks ill o' the deid, but I will say this, that Wull Murray had his faults. Aye, and though he's a corp the day, I canna pertend that he was ony freend o' mine."
When Mary had gone Dauvit turned to me with a queer smile.
"Dominie, you tell me that you have studied the science o' the mind, psy—what is't you call it?"
"Psychology," I said.
"That's the word. Weel then, dominie, just tell me why Mary Rickart had sic a pick at auld Willie Murray."
I smoked for a time thoughtfully.
"It's difficult, Dauvit. I haven't got enough evidence. However I think I can make a good guess."
"Weel?"
"Mary and Willie sat in the same class at school?"
"Good!" said Dauvit, "they did."
"And Mary was Willie's first sweetheart?"
"Imphm!"
"Mary loved Willie and he loved her. They were sweethearts for a long time, but another damsel came and stole Willie's heart away. Mary wept bitter tears, but in time she repressed her love . . . and it changed into hate."
Dauvit chuckled.
"A very nice story," he said, "but, ye ken, it's just a story. You cudna guess the real reason why Mary hated him so much."
"Then what was the real reason, Dauvit?"
He laughed.
"Mary hated Willie Murray because he aince telt her that she was a silly woman to think that she cud wear a number fower shoe on a number acht foot."
We laughed together, and then I said:
"Dauvit, why did you never marry? You like women I fancy."
My remark made him thoughtful.
"Man," he said, "I've often speered the same question o' mysel. As a young man I was gye fond o' the lassies, but . . . I dinna ken!" and he broke off suddenly and took up a boot. "Thae soles are just paper noo-a-days," he growled.
I refused to let him run away from the subject.
"Had you a sweetheart?" I asked.
He laughed boisterously to hide his confusion.
"Dozens o' them!" he cried.
"Then why didn't you marry one of them?"
He shook his head.
"Dominie, that's the question." He stared at the grate for a while. "There was Maggie Adams, a bonny lassie she was. Man, I mind when I took her to Kirriemair Market . . ." He sighed. "Aye, man, dominie, I liked Maggie mair than ony o' the others."
"Did she love someone else?" I asked softly.
Dauvit took some time to reply.
"No, man, Maggie wanted me."
"Then the fault lay on your side? You didn't love her!"
Dauvit brought his hand down on the board.
"Goad, man, but I did!"
I could not understand.
"Man, on the road hame frae Kirrie Market I was to speer if she wud marry me . . . but I didna."
We smoked silently for a long minute.
"Ye see," he went on slowly, "Maggie was a bonny lassie and I liked to kiss and cuddle her, but kissin' and cuddlin' are a very sma' part o' marriage, dominie. There was something in Maggie that I was aye lookin' for, but cud never find. Aye, I tried to find it in other lassies, but I never fund it."
"What was it you wanted to find, Dauvit?"
Dauvit paused.
"Ye micht call it a soul," he said. "Oh, aye," he went on, "Maggie was a bonny lassie wi' a heart o' gold, but she hadna a soul. Wud ye like to ken what stoppit me speerin' her that nicht as we cam through Zoar? Man, I said to mysel: When we come to the toll bar I'll tak Maggie in my arms and say: 'Maggie, I want ye, lassie!'"
He had to light his pipe here.
"Weelaweel, we got to the toll bar and I said: 'Maggie, we'll sit doon on the bank for a while.' So we sat doon, and I was just tryin' to screw up my courage when she pointed to the settin' sun. 'I'd like a dress like that, only bonnier,' she said. Man, dominie, I looked at that sunset wi' its gold and purple . . . and syne I kent that Maggie was nae wife for me. I kent that she had nae soul."
After a time I remarked: "And so, Dauvit, you are a bachelor because you were a poet!"
He busied himself with the paper sole.
"Maggie married Bob Wilson the farmer o' East Mains. Aye, and the marriage turned oot a happy one, for Bob never rose abune neeps and tatties in his life." Dauvit sighed. "But I sometimes used to look at the twa o' them when their bairns were roond their knees, and syne I used to gie a bigDawm!and ging back to my wee hoose and mak my ain tea."
"It doesna pay to hae a soul, dominie," he added with a short laugh.
"Perhaps you could have given her a soul, Dauvit," I said.
He shook his head with decision.
"Na, dominie, a soul is something ye're born wi'; if it isna there it canna be put there. You say that I'm a poet, and you may be richt; there may be a wee bit o' the artist in me, and ye never heard o' an artist that was happily married. Wumman and art are opposites, and a man canna marry both."
"That is true, Dauvit. But art is the feminine side of a man's nature; it is the woman in him . . . and the woman is superfluous to him, for she becomes the rival of the woman in himself."
This thought impressed Dauvit.
"Noo I understand Rabbie Burns," he cried. "Rabbie cudna love a wumman because he loved the wumman in himsel. She was the wife that bore his bairns—his poems." He paused, and a pained look came to his face. "There may be a poet in me, dominie," he said ruefully, "but she has borne me nae bairns. I am ane o' the mute inglorious Miltons . . . and I wud ha' been better if I had married Maggie and talked aboot neeps and tatties a' my life."
"You couldn't have done it, Dauvit," I said as I rose to go.
From the door I looked back at the old man as he stared at the fender.
* * * * *
One of the analysts says that the flirt is suffering from a mother complex. He has never got over his infantile love for his mother, and he is always trying to find the mother again in women. Hence he is like a bee, sipping at one flower and then flying on to another.
I suspect that many a bachelor is a bachelor because his early love is fixed on the mother. Few mothers realise the danger of coddling their children. I have heard grown men dying in pain call on their mothers. It is a hard task for parents, but they must always try to break their children's fixation upon them.
Women having father-complexes are common. The other day I met a girl who had no interest in young men; all her interest was in men with beards. No matter what the conversation was about she managed to mention her father. . . "Father says!" She will probably marry a man twice her age. It is well-known that boys of seventeen often fall in love with women of thirty, while adolescent girls usually fall in love with men of thirty. They are not really in love; they are looking for a substitute for the mother or father.
The psychology of the man of forty who falls in love with the girl of sixteen is more difficult to grasp. I think that in most cases the man's love interest is fixed away back in childhood; often the girl of sixteen is a substitute for a beloved sister. Perhaps on the other hand, a man of forty's paternal instinct has been starved so long that he wants to find at once a wife and a child.
Few of us realise how much of our love interest is fixed in the past. Think of the men who want to be mothered by their wives . . . they generally address their wives as "Mother." I know happily married men who are psychically children; "mother" won't allow them to carry coals or wash dishes or brush clothes; she treats them as they unconsciously desire to be treated—as babes.