"are still attendedBy the vision splendid,"
although too often
"The man beholds it die away,And fade into the light of common day."
Of courseallthe opening conversation need not be on the moral and religious planes, but some of it should lead intoexplanations of nature and of the common life of this work-day world, improving dexterity and common sense; but one can hardly talk with children about anything, in a genuine way, that does not bring out of them some religious or moral expression. I think it is in connection with these conversations to which the children furnish by their spontaneous confidences the vital points, round which the thoughts of the whole little company shall revolve, that the teacher can connect her own story-telling.
For such genuine conversation the necessary prerequisite on the part of the teacher is a real faith in children's being thebreath of Godin their Essence.
Then she will not have anywill-workof her own, but listen to hear what the child is attending to, be it nothing but a bit of string, which, of course, must have a certain length that can be measured, and with which other things may be measured, and which is made of material that has passed perhaps through the hands of many manufacturers, and which in its elements at least was a growth of nature, all whose works bear witness to the being ofGod; forGod's throne may be reached from the ground of childish play as certainly and readily as from many a pulpit and cathedral, if not more so.
A child whose affection for his companions and for the personages of a story told by the kindergartner, and who sees the connection of some little playful or other experience that he tells as his story for the morning, isengaged in a service of God, more vitally bearing on his growth in grace than any mere repetition of prayers. A play bringing out little kindnesses, sweet courtesies, gentle self-adjustments to his companions, the asking and giving of forgiveness for little discourtesies or grave wrong-doings, brings the child nearerGodthan any spoken words of worship can, the joy attending such innocent sweetness being the proof of the vital union of his soul with a very presentGod.
So the work of the good Samaritan, though he was doubtlessthinkingonly of theindividualhe was comforting, and not at all of God, was recognized by Christ as areal act of worship; for it was the fulfilment of the second commandmentlike unto the first.
The time will come, I confidently believe, when all religionists of whatever denomination will recognize that the favorite doctrines and formalities which distinguish them from each other are a mere superficial crust of that true spiritual life which is to be lived when the grown-up shall all become as little children, who feel that,
"In their work and in their play,God is with them all the day."
In speaking of the ceremonies of the Temple worship, which Moses made symbolical of all the virtues of life, moral and religious, but which in Paul's day had fallen into such amereritual that this great Apostle said that theHoly Ghost was not bodily exercise, but a hopeful, faithfulcharity of thought,feeling,and deed; and this is what children can be guided into from the beginning, provided the kindergartner knows how to converse and playwiththem instead of talking to them and coercing themever so kindlyinto acting outherwill. The play of childhood is the most genuine and intense life that is lived, body, heart, and willconspiringentirely; and it is by respecting the child'swillandheartthat you really help instead ofhinderingthis unification of his threefold nature, which corresponds to the Trinity of the Supreme Being and preventsthatfrom becoming a bewildering tritheism in his conception.
A child cannot bejustunless he isloving, nor attain the freedom of moral dignity unless he asserts himself; and there is no way to nurture this self-respect except to express respect to him, by being as courteous to him as you are to any adult, always asking him to explain himself and his ownmotives, when he seems to be in the wrong, before you condemn him.
I think I have gained some of the deepest insights I have ever had intoDivine Truth, by discovering what was the motive thought of some child, who did what seemed inexplicable, till he told me, or I had divined, his secret reason.
It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their secret, as those know who have seen some maiden kindergartners talkwiththeir pupils in the opening exercises; but those who are not mothers will always do well to observe carefully those who are. On the other hand, mothers have to guard themselves against exaggerating their own children's naturescomparatively. I have known some of the best mothers in the worlddo that, so as to be practically of bad influence over children not their own.
Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners should therefore none the less study Frœbel's science carefully and humbly.
Allchildren are alike in having thethreefold nature. I wish I had time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences that have come under my observation, in which the respectful, genial kindergartner has assisted in some moral development, whose occasion was very trivial to the superficial observer.
Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces can be unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which is the moral gymnasium of mankind.
This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." But the nature, which is the image of the Divine Nature, cannot bemechanically, but must be morally and spiritually, trained; that is, addressed and treated as free agency.
The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no lessthan to his equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you I do homage." This is one of the gleams of light from the lost Paradise in which man was created, and to which we hope the kindergarten is to more than restore the race, when it shall have become the universally applied principle of culture for human beings. (See Appendix,Note F.)
Wespeak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call children living books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed in educating them (which is putting them into a harmonious activity of all their powers), without knowledge, such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these "harps of a thousand strings."
This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a discrimination of their individualities; though observation of these will be made by a consummate kindergartner; it is a knowledge of what is universal in children, essential to the constitution of human beings.
Frœbel never wrote out, in systematic form, the psychology which underlies and gives the rational ground to all the details of his method. But there are pregnant sentences in all his writings, and in his sayings handed down by tradition, which give such insights, that it can be divined with some completeness.
We propose to give such glimpses as occur to us from time to time—not always in our own words, but as often as we can in Frœbel's, and also in the words of other thinkers, whose guesses at this kind of truth light up their writings on many subjects.
We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact; there is, in the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-existent to all impressions made by the universe, and consequently to all operations of the understanding—perceiving, comparing,judging—for these are intentional acts of the pre-existent soul breathed into his body and bidden to "have dominion."—Genesis 1.
What is this pre-existent soul, this mysterious depth of personality?
Washington Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art, has finely said: "Man does not live by science; he feels, acts, and judges right in a thousand things, without the consciousness of any rule by which he so feels, acts, and judges. Happily for him, he has a surer guide than human science in thatunknown power within him, without which he had been without any knowledge." Again, he speaks of "those intuitive powers, which are above and beyond both the understanding and the senses; which, nevertheless, are so far from precluding knowledge, as, on the contrary, to require—as their effective condition—the widest intimacy with things external, without which their very existence must remain unknown."
He does not, however, merely assert this pre-existence of the soul to the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of it that we all can appreciate. "Suppose," he says, "we analyze a certain combination of sounds and colors, so as to ascertain the exact relative qualities of the one, and the collocation of the other, and then compare them, what possible resemblance can the understanding perceive between these sounds and colors? And yet a something within us responds to both—asimilar emotion. And so it is with a thousand things, nay, with myriads of objects, that have no other affinity but with that mysterious harmony, which began with our being, which slept with our infancy, and which their presence only seems to have awakened. If we cannot go back to our own childhood, we may see its illustration in those about us who are now in that unsophisticated state. Look at them in the fields, among the birds and flowers; their happy faces speak the harmony within them; the divineinstrument which these objects have touched, gives them a joy, which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh consciousness, can know, yet what do childrenunderstandof the theory of colors, or musical quantities?"
That this mysterious power, this feeling soul, is thehumancharacteristic, is suggested in another paragraph of these lectures. "What, for instance, can we suppose to be the effect of the purple haze of a summer sunset on the cows or sheep, or even on the more delicate inhabitants of the air? From what we know of their habits, we cannot suppose more than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature? But how is it with the man, whom we shall suppose an object in the same scene, stretched on the same bank with the ruminating cattle, and basking in the same light that flickers from the skimming birds? Does he feel nothing more than the genial warmth?"—Vol. I. p. 84.
This feeling of beauty, this power which appreciates harmony, this creative unity, in fine, this æsthetic soul, distinct from and above the understanding (which certain philosophers seem to think is all of man, over and above his body), is not all of the soul,—but the moral and even merely social sentiment has the same pre-existence. Allston bears witness to this also. He says: "With respect to Truth and Goodness, whose pre-existent ideas, being living constituents of an immortal spirit, need but the slightest breath of someoutward conditionof the true and good—a simple problem or a kind act—to awaken them, as it were, from their unconscious sleep.... We may venture to assert that no philosopher, however ingenious, could communicate to a child the abstract idea of Right, had the child nothing beyond or above the understanding. He might, indeed, be taught, like inferior animals,—a dog, for instance,—that if he took certain forbidden things, he would be punished, and thus do right throughfear. Still he would desire the forbidden thing belonging to another, nor could he conceive why he should notappropriate to himself—and thus allay his appetite—what was another's, could he do so undetected; nor attain to any higher notion of Right than that of the strongest. But the childhassomething higher than the mere power of apprehending consequences (external?). The simplest exposition, whether of right or wrong, is instantly responded to by something within him, which, thus awakened, becomes to him a living voice, and the good and the true must thenceforth answer its call. We do not say that these ideas of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness will, strictly speaking, always act. Though indestructible, they may be banished for a time by the perverted Will, and mockeries of the brain, like the fume-born phantoms from the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, may take their places and assume their functions. We have examples of this in every age, and perhaps in none more startling than the present. But we mean only that they cannot be (absolutely?) forgotten; nay, they are but too often recalled with unwelcome distinctness....
"From the dim present, then, we would appeal to that fresher time, ere the young spirit had shrunk from the overbearing pride of the (vitiated?) understanding, and confidently ask, if the emotions we then felt from the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, did not seem, in some way, to refer to a common origin? And we would also ask, if it was frequent that the influence from one was singly felt? if it did not rather bring with it, however remotely, a sense of something—though widely differing,—yet still akin to it? when we have basked in the beauty of a summer sunset, was there nothing in the sky, that spoke to the soul of Truth and Goodness? And when the opening intellect first received the truth of the great law of gravitation, and felt itself mounting through the profound of space, to travel with the planets in their unerring rounds,—did never then the kindred ideas of Goodness and Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled music (not fabled to the soul), which led you on as one entranced?And again, when, in the passive quiet of your moral nature, so predisposed, in youth, to all things genial, you have looked around on this marvellous, ever-teeming earth, ever teeming alike for mind and body, and have felt upon you the flow, as from ten thousand streams of innocent enjoyment, did you not then almost hear them shout in confluence, and almost see them gushing upwards, as if they would prove theirunityin one harmonious fountain?"
It is of the last consequence that the kindergartner should take into her mind that this æsthetic soul exists in children as a primary fact; for, unless she believes in it, she will not respect it, and take advantage of it in what she does for them. It is to be respected and brought out into the understanding of children, by means of the beautiful things which she leads them to do and make, and with which she surrounds them; for, as Allston says, this consciousness "requires as its effective condition, the widest intimacy with things external." When children are continually in squalid surroundings, these seem at length to strike in and paralyze the spontaneous action of the æsthetic being, who is pre-existent to consciousness of the power which compares and judges and makes up a theory of colors. And, as has been shown, this feeling of beauty, this power of appreciating harmony and unity, this æsthetic nature, distinct from and above the understanding, which some people idly think to be all of man beside his body, is not all of the soul, for the moral sentiment has the same pre-existence.
We have brought together these paragraphs taken from Allston's lectures on Art, for the consideration of practical kindergartners, all the more confidently, because they were not written as theory of education, but were parts of a practical inquiry after the standard of judgment for pictorial and plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He sought to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate science,—for science must always be inadequate, as Newtonso forcibly expressed, when he defined it "gathering a few pebbles on the shores of the infinite ocean of truth." The object of the lecturer was what the kindergartner's first object should be,—to awaken the self-respect of the eternal soul within us all, making the life of our individuality—our personality—which, in its mysterious depth and independent pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the image of the Divine Personality, whose spoken word is the material universe, but clothed in flesh becomesman. It is no part of the kindergartner's duty to give—she can only awaken—the feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and conscience. She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that the child shall do, thereby assisting him to form his own understanding so that his bodily organization may be properly developed; to let in upon his soulnaturein its beauteous forms and order, and his fellow-creatures, in their legitimate claims upon him. Then he shall come forth from the sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive consciousness of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this marrying of finite thought to infinite love, is Frœbel's Education; and cannot be accomplished, unless the kindergartner clearly sees what God has done for the child absolutely, and what for an ineffable purpose,—most gracious to the human race,—He has left to be done by human providence, whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some other fellow-creature.
It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a child is regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon, or as a living power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be educated by truth.
Wehave spoken of the evidences of the æsthetic being found in the mysterious depths of human personality, pre-existent to the individual understanding (which is a growth in time); and that, without there were this æsthetic being, underlying allindividualconsciousness, there would be no standard of human virtue or art.
This æsthetic person has also (previous to the development of the understanding, which makes the synthesis of himself and nature) an impulsive force, instinct with the desire to change his conditions. Man does not appear in the world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and suffering; but as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an effect either orderly or disorderly.
The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a measure personal force. All material forces are uniform and necessary and correlative in their action, which is impressed upon them from without themselves. Man alone is self-active, and may clash with the other forces to his own pain, and he will often do so, until by knowledge of them he can harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumentality to satisfy his æsthetic nature. We call this self-activity of man, which is in such vital union with his sensibility, the human will, and it makes the personal life of every one to learn this self-activity of his, in its differences from and relations to all other forces, as he can only do perfectly by keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social relation with other æsthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds himself in these relations with fellow-beings who have more or less of the knowledge he has not; and some of them have all the responsibility of his actions until he has begun to know himself in discrimination from the material universe and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a fulcrum for his own effective action among them. The one centralunity whose æsthetic being and will are inclusive of himself and fellow-beings as subject, on the one hand, and of the material universe as object, on the other, is God.
The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain because he is finite and not omnipotent. God is the omnipotent maker of the material universe, but man is not absolutely made; he is a cause, that is,created to make, if we may credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of creation is the most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be surpassed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a correspondent poem, with God for its theme instead of man and nature.
It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance at least, the fully developed man, that this hymn of the Creator was possible. God's word (revelation of himself) was in the world, embodied in the things made from the beginning; but until it was embodied in a man, free to will, it was truth in the form of law only (regulative), not yet in the completer form of love (creative). In short, before St. John could sing that divine song, he must have seen God in a man, full of grace and truth, dwelling among men as a fellow-man, and overflowing with a power at once sympathetic and causal.
God created man, male and female (that is, giving and receiving equally), to be keepers of each other, and to educate each other. They may tempt and fail each other by presumption as Eve, and want of self-respect as Adam, are represented to have done, at the beginning; or may save and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary historically did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspiring all who know him, to educate and redeem each other.
In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it is indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which is a primeval fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering and enjoyment. The educator ought to embody God in ameasure, and treat the will of the child that is to be educated, on the same grand system of respecting individual freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition, awaken the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man-blessing power.
This is therationaleof Frœbel's method of government. He assumes that the child is—not to be made by education a sensibility, but—an infinite sensibility already, and to be vivified into individual consciousness thereof, by the knowledge of nature to which you are to give him the clue;—not to be made by your government of him, a power of creating effects, but already an immeasurable power of creating effects (that is, causal)—which you are to make him feel responsible for, by helping him to get experimental knowledge of the laws that obtain in God's creation.
For it is knowledge of laws that is the first thing attainable—not knowledge of objects. A child's senses are the avenues of the knowledge of objects; his self-activity is the avenue of the knowledge of laws. He must have experimental knowledge of laws before he can begin to have knowledge of objects, because his impulsive activity is the means of developing his organs of sense, by which he becomes capable of receiving impressions from objects of nature; and his own effective action produces the objects outside of his organs which first command his interested attention, and rouse his powers of analysis, or by which his powers of analysis are roused through your educating intervention.
It is the maternal nursing of body and mind which educates the free force within to produce transient effects, and finally objects, agreeable to the sensibility. Even before the will is educated to causality, it exerts itself, because exertion is agreeable to human sensibility; but when left uneducated, the will brings about effects that prove disagreeableultimately, if not immediately, to the æsthetic being, paralyzing it more or less, if the organization be feeble; and perverting it when it is strong; in either case, whether crushing or exasperating it, producing selfishness, the germ of all evil.
Thus evil begins in the social sphere, in the disorderly action or in the neglect of those who have in charge the æsthetic free force of the child, compelling it to revolve on its own axis in a vain endeavor to obtain the satisfaction of its æsthetic nature, which it ought to obtain through the generous cherishing action of others' love, carrying it round the central sun in human companionship. The soul instinctively expects love, and to do so, and to act out love intentionally, is its salvation, its eternal life. There is no signature of immortality so sure as the immeasurable craving for love on the one hand, and the immeasurable impulse to love on the other hand, which characterizes man; for the satisfaction of the craving is no greater joy than the satisfaction of loving.
It is because deathseemsthe cessation of relation with our kind, that it is the king of terrors. When the disease or decay of the body curtails relations and makes us solitary, or incapable of enjoying relations, death is not dreaded, but craved as relief. To whomever it seems the beginning of wider relations, it is hailed as the revealing angel of God. Isolation is the horror of horrors. It was one of the primal intuitions that "it is not good for man to be alone." The nurse should remember this, and not leave the baby to feel lonely. Every mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction,—to come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life—a word which signifies active relation;—and, in its highest sense, spiritual relation.Life,love, andlibertyare identical wordsin their radical elements. There is no love without liberty, nor fulness of life without love.
The liberty of man, or his freedom to will, though it gives him the power to dash himself against antagonizing law, is the proof of infinite love to man in the Creator,—a love which must needs outmeasure all the evil he can do himself or others; for evil provokes others' love for our victims, and is self-limited, by reason of the pain it brings, sooner or later, on him who does it, and the desire for infinite love which it defines and stimulates.
Man and nature are the contrasts which God connects and harmonizes. He presents nature to the mind as immutable law, but before the understanding is formed to apprehend law, He emparadises the child in the love of the mother. In short, the human race embodies love to the soul, before the universe (which embodies law) is yet apprehended. The heart that apprehends love, is older than the mind which apprehends law; and it is because it is so, that manfeels free. When man becomes mere law to man, instead of love, he feels he is enslaved.
These are the most practical truths for the kindergartner. If these propositions are truths (and their evidence is the explanation they give of the mysteries of sin and redemption, both of which are unquestionable facts of human history, according to the testimony of all nations), then let her see to it, that in her relation with the children of her charge, she never so presents the law, as to obscure the love, which it is the primal duty of men to embody and manifest to each other.
But, on the other hand, do not keep back the law; for the law, too, is one expression of the Creator's being. What is law? It is the order of the beauteous forms of things, which, when appreciated as God's order, becomes a stepping stone to his throne. For God proposes to share his throne with us, if we may trust another primeval intuition of thehuman mind, viz., that God commands man, male and female, that is, men in equal social relation, to "have dominion" over all creation, below man.
The human being not only craves liberty and love instinctively, but law also; he "feels the weight of chance desires," and "longs for a repose that ever is the same." This is therationaleof Frœbel's method in the occupations; he suggests the child's action, sometimes by interrogation merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite? which itself suggests the combination of opposites, that immediately produces a symmetrical effect. The child enjoys the symmetry all the more, if he feels as if he personally produced it. This is the secret of his love of repetition. He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he feels that he does it all of himself. He does not want you to help him even with your words (and you never should help himexceptwith words). If a child acts from a suggestion, he feels free,—but if he produces the same effect, or a similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a still more self-respecting sense of power; and his will becomes more consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness of order.
The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under her care whose will has been exasperated by arbitrary and capricious treatment, or who has been made to act against his inclination till he has reacted, out of purecontrariness, as we say. This contrariness proves that he has been outraged; perhaps in some instances the effect has been produced by not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The very violence of the evil may show that he is an exceptionally fine child, with an enormous sense of power that he does not know what to do with because the proper educational influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacymay be a reaction against the vicious will of another, who, instead of offering him the bread of law, has presented to him the stone of his own stumbling. It is indispensable to give the child law, as well as love; but when you are doubtful whether you can genially suggest the law,—at all events express the love; and never substitute for the law your own will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is God's will; your will is not creative of the child's will like God's; its best effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the child's, when the latter is feeble, which it sometimes is by reason of physical mal-organization, or by having been crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish caprice.
I may be told that if Frœbel's education is wholly of a genial, coaxing character, it fails of being an image of the Divine Providence, which is an alternation of attractions and antagonisms, speaking now in the music of nature, and now in thunders and lightnings, not only cherishing the heart with love, but stimulating the will with law; and be warned not to enervate the character, by producing an æsthetic luxury of sentiment, by which the personal being shall stagnate in the worst kind of selfishness—the passive kind. This objection might be pertinent, if the kindergarten were to be protracted beyond the era to which Frœbel limits it. Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity. The purest, most loving, most disinterested will known to human history, recognized that there might be awiserwill, not to be doubted as still more loving; and said, "Not my will, but Thine be done,"—"Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (my free causal power). But let the kindergartner remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and beware of enacting the sovereign judge. There is no doubt that an exclusively cherishing tenderness should be the law of the nursery, with no antagonism whatever, because atthat age it is a wise self-assertion which we wish to develop. We therefore actforthe infant, having secured his actingwithus by our genial encouragement. But this is no argument for continuing to act for him, when he can act with consciousness of an individual life. We must not prolong babyhood into the kindergarten; or, at least, we must begin to engraft personal consciousness upon it, byplayinglittle antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against the play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the children play with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says, "according to laws," and they will all the more likely seek laws when they come into wider relations.
The development of the consciousness of man is serial. In the nursery we coax the child to exercise the various muscles by playfully duplicating their action; we make himmake believewalk, impressing his senses, as it were, with the whole operation as an object. The child first experiences the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake of renewing this pleasure; then enjoys your helping him to do what he has not yet the bodily strength and skill to accomplish; and finally wills to take up his body and make his first independent step. This is the first crisis in the history of his individuality, and every mother knows it is the cheer of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pass through it. He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your care, he has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the pain of numerous falls, from want of guardian arms and supporting hands. Such pains disturb and haunt his fancy, and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy give strength and enterprise to activity.
The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary processes which foreshadow all the processes of the Divine Providence. Therefore, even in the nursery weplayantagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoymentby making him conscious of isolation a moment, to restore, as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head unexpectedly, and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So we sometimes pretend to let him fall, and just when he is about to cry with alarm, catch him again and kiss him.
Frœbel in his nursery plays has several of this nature; and as children grow older they play antagonisms spontaneously, which are beneficial just so far as they elicit the consciousness of individual power; but are harmful if, proceeding too far, they show its limitations painfully, and make the child feel himself a victim.
In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened—if it is never superseded by your will—until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then, as he took his body into his own keeping when he began to run alone, so now he will take his character into his own hands to educate, and he will do it all the more certainly and energetically, if he feels you to be an all-helping, all-cherishing, all-inspiring friend, which you must needs be if you are open to feel and wise to know God's love to you, in making you His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the immeasurable love of God, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for the fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the form of will; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it keeps its freedom to alter and alter and alter, till there is no longer any evil to be conscious of, and men shall have got the dominion over nature, which consists in using it for allgenerous purposes, in a universal mutual understanding with one another. To be in the progressive attainment of this high destiny, is the growing happiness of man; a happiness which must ever have in it that element ofvictory, which distinguishes the eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of Buddha.
Wehave been asked by one of the students of Frœbel's art and science, what books we should recommend to help her to a fuller knowledge of the subjects on which we gave a few hints in our first and second paper ofGlimpses.
In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed preparation for any study of books on intellectual and moral philosophy, to look back on our own moral history and mental experience, and ask ourselves what was the process of our moral growth, and the circumstances of the formation of our opinions; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians, and companions, had the best—and what the worst—practical effects upon our characters; what aided and what hindered us? Every fault in our characters has its history, having generally originated in the action of others upon us; sometimes their intentional action, which may have been merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and malignant; and sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted. On the other hand, much of our life that has blest ourselves and others, can be referred to spontaneous manifestations of others, having no special reference to ourselves; generous sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous acts recorded in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life; great truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which our young hearts mused till the fire burned.
This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we share, is a living nucleus that will give vital meaning to any true words with which scientific treatises on the mind are written; and a power to judge whether the writer is talking about facts of life, or mere abstractions, out of which have died all spiritual substance, leaving only "a heap of empty boxes." In no department of study are we more liable to take words for things than in this. Abstraction is the source of all the false philosophy and theology which has distracted the world. Generalizations are of no aid—but a delusion and a snare—unless the mental and moral phenomena, from which they are derived, have been the writer's experiences, personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as substantial as material things, to say the least; and even they do not do justice to the whole truth, which is—if we may so express it—the vital experience of God. Hence is the Living Word to which human abstractions can never do justice; being, indeed, but the refuse of thought, "a weight to be laid aside" and forgotten, like a work done, as we stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our "high calling."
In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell'sPhilosophy of Rhetoric, there is a section headed, "Why is it that nonsense so often escapes being detected, both by the writer and reader?" It explains with great perspicuity the uses and abuses of our faculty of abstraction, which is not a spiritual, but merely an intellectual faculty. I would commend this essay (and indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a student of intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a second time with some other papers, by Phillips & Sampson, Boston, in 1857, and probably still to be found in old bookstores, if it be not reprinted by its author, R. L. Hazard.
On the subject of my second paper ofGlimpsesthe same author has written two books, one published by D.Appleton, in New York, in 1864,The Freedom of the Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a Creative First Cause; and in 1869, Lee & Shepard, Boston, published, as supplement,Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Willing, addressed to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the Existence of Matter, and our Notions of Infinite Space.[13]
Ifthe spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent love, hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date,
"An eye among the blind,That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep,Haunted forever by the eternal mind,"
yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well as the body, begins in time, and gradually identifies the individual for communication with other individuals of its kind. The beginning of the human understanding is in the impressions of an environing universe, against which the sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the organs of sense, which are the connection of those two great contrasts,the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions of sense are the instrumentality by which the will vivifies the heart, so disposing the particulars of the surrounding universe as to give the definite form ofthoughtsto consciousness. The human being has no absolute knowledge like the lower animals, who are passive instrumentality of God to certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created for the infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with one another and God, men need to become conscious of the whole process of their own being, and do so by a gradual conversation with God, who is forever saying, by the universe, which is his speech,I am. And here education begins its offices, by helping man to replyThou art, which he does by his legitimate art. But no one man can utter thethou artof humanity adequately. It takes all humanity forever and ever to do so; and it does not do so but just so far as the men who compose it are in mutual understanding and communion with each other. Therefore each child must be taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to realize his own consciousness by learning that of his fellows.
In the action and reaction of the individual with his special environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which gives him pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the former, and repelled from the latter; and thus come to discriminate outward things from each other. The observation and discrimination of the particulars of nature isthinking. Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts, but discrimination and classification of things according to their similarities, is theoperationof thought.
Education has an office in both the accumulation of sensuous impressions and the operation of thinking. The mother and nurse of each child must so order the objects about him, that his organs shall be properly impressed, and not overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good instrumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions.A tender sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is gradually coming to identify himself, and love,—such as only a mother can have in the greatest perfection,—are the special qualifications of the educator at this stage. Such a knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable the educator to lead the child's activity according to law and order, can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite plane, an image of God's creative action. The educator who should succeed the nurse is the kindergartner, who, without lacking the sympathetic affection of the nurse, must add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so that she may bring these opposites into their right connection with each other.
She will therefore lead the child toproducesomething that shall serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead of letting the blind will spend its energy in wild and aimless motion, she will present a desirable aim to attain, which will produce an effect that shall satisfy the heart, and produce an object that shall engage the attention, and stimulate to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly known, not only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being, which was the child's own method of producing the thing.
The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous impression, which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, secondly, perception; and, thirdly, an adapting of means to ends, and thereby rising into judgment and knowledge. To get understanding precedes getting knowledge, which is the special work of the understanding when it is developed.
There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding, and which is to be discriminated from it—fancy. Vivid and clear sensuous impressions are the foundation of fancy, as well as of understanding. But the will, acting among these impressions in a wild and sovereign way, is fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the order of nature, is understanding. Frœbel has provided forthe development of the understanding the occupations, as he calls the regularproductionof forms, transient and permanent. Nothing can be produced which satisfies the æsthetic sense, except by following the laws of creation. To analyze these productions will give experimental understanding of those laws. In superintending the occupations, the kindergartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right words; for words, the first works of human art, have a great deal to do with the development of the understanding, lifting man into a sphere above that of the mere animal. After a thing is made, or an effect produced and named, it must be made a subject for analysis; and it can easily be made so, because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action into a thing, makes it interesting to them; and they can make an exhaustive analysis of it,because, in addition to its appearances, they know the law of its being, which was their own method, and the cause of its being, which was their ownmotive. From analyzing their own works, children can, in due time, be led to analyze works of nature. And here the kindergartner has great room for the exercise of judgment, in the selection of suitable objects.
Frœbel advised that objects for lessons should be taken from the vegetable creation; and that children should be interested in planting seeds and watching growth, becoming acquainted with its general conditions, observing which are within the scope of their own powers to provide, and which are beyond human power; thus leading the understanding through nature, outward and inward, to God.
If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the objects of nature analyzed are beautiful, this culture of the understanding may refine and elevate the taste, and beautify the fancy.
For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kindergartner.It is not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but not beyond an indirect influence. The soundness of the understanding is conducive to a beautiful play of fancy, which is a peculiarly human faculty; for we have not a particle of evidence that any animal below man has this kind of thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature in its creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at defiance. But we must defer to another paper the many things we have to say in regard to the imagination and its culture.
Wehave given a few hints by way of answering the questions on psychology, which must come up, to be considered by a kindergartner who is intent on understanding the "harp of a thousand strings," from which it is her duty to bring out the music.
We have found that the human being comes into the world with an æsthetic nature, which is to be vivified by the presentation of the beauties of nature and art, in such a way as to insure reaction of the will in creations of fancy; for only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented from degenerating into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly subjective, it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic manipulation of some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any kind necessitates the examination of natural elements and the discovery of the laws of production, which are, of course, identical with the organic laws of nature that bear witness to an intelligent Creator.
To excite the human understanding to appreciate names, and classify things foruseand giving pleasure, it is necessary to present things to children gradually, first singly, andthen in simple rhythmical combinations, so that they may have time to find themselves personally, and not be overwhelmed with a multitude of impressions. A real lover of children will quickly find out that they like to take time "playing with things," as they call it; and that there is a special pleasure in discovering differences in things; that a new distinct perception of any relation of things delights the child, as the discovery of a principle delights the adult mind. The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether sedentary or moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they cultivate the heart and conscience, because the moving plays have for their indispensable condition numbers of their equals, and everything they make is intended for others. The presentation of persons, as having the same needs and desires of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to call into consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls into activity the understanding and imagination.
Because nature and human kind are sovastthat, as a whole they daunt the young mind, even to the point of checking its growth, it is necessary that some one, who has had time to analyze it in some degree, should call attention to points; and it is the consummate art of education to know what points to touch, so that the mind shall make out the octave; for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development, and the act of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with actual manipulation of nature, is necessary to intellectual development; so is kindness and justice acted out, to the development of the social and moral nature or conscience.
But there is something else in man than relations to external nature and fellow-man. This self-determining being, who moves, perceives, understands, fancies, loves, and feels moral responsibility to the race in which he finds himself aliving member, is only consciously happy when he is magnanimous, which he can only be, if he feels himself a free power in the bosom of infinite love; in short, a son of the Father of all men! "We are the offspring of God" is the inspiration alike of heathen poet and Christian apostle.
As the psychological condition of the human love which is man's social happiness, is that sense of individual want and imperfection which stimulates the will to seek the mother and brother; so the psychological condition of the piety which makes man's beatitude, is the sense of social imperfection, in respect both to moral purity and happiness, stimulating the will to seek a Father of all spirits. The more we love, the more we feel the need of God. But is God nothing but "an infinite sigh at the bottom of the heart," as Feuerbach, the holiest of infidels, sadly says? or, as in thinking, we discover the entity we name I; so in loving, do we not discover God, or rather does not God reveal Himself to us, as Essential Substance? Wordsworth declares that