UNDERSTANDING.
We have 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 all individual consciousness, 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 central unity 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 a measure, 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 the rationale of 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 disagreeable ultimately, 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 death seems the 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, and liberty are identical words in 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 man feels 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 the human 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 the rationale of 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 him except with 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 pure contrariness, 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 obstinacy may 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 a wiser will, 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 at that age it is a wise self-assertion which we wish to develop. We therefore act for the infant, having secured his acting with us 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, by playing little 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 him make believe walk, 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 we play antagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoyment by 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 all generous 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 of victory, which distinguishes the eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of Buddha.