INTELLIGENCE
Let us pause a moment to consider what is the "key" by means of which we may bring about the realization of the liberty of the child; that key which sets in motion the mechanisms essential to education.
The child who is "free to move about," and who perfects himself by so doing, is he who has an "intelligent object" in his movements; the child who is free to develop his inner personality, who perseveres in a task for a considerable time, and organizes himself upon such a fundamental phenomenon, is sustained and guided by an intelligent purpose. Without this his persistence in work, his inner formation, and his progress would not be possible. When we refrain from guiding the subjugated child step by step, when, liberating the child from our personal influence, we place him in an environment suited to him and in contact with the means of development, we leave him confidently to "his own intelligence." His motor activity will then direct itself to definite actions: he will wash his hands and face, sweep the room, dust the furniture, change his clothes, spread the rugs, lay the table, cultivate plants, and take care of animals. He will choose the tasks conducive to his development and persist in them, attracted and guided by his interest towards a sensory material which leads him to distinguish one thing from another, to select, to reason, to correct himself; and the acquirements thus made are not only "a cause of internal growth" but a strong propulsive force to further progress. Thus, passing from simple objects to objects of ever increasing complexity, he becomes possessed of a culture; moreover, he organizes his character by means of the internal order which forms itself within him, and by the skill which he acquires.
Therefore, when we leave the child to himself, we leave him to his intelligence, not, as is commonly supposed, "to his instincts," meaning by the word "instincts" those designated as animal instincts. We are so accustomed to; treat children like dogs and other domestic animals, that a "free child" makes us think of a dog, barking, jumping, and stealing dainties. And so accustomed are we to regard as manifestations of evil instincts the rebellions of the child treated as a beast, his obscure protests and desperations, or the protective devices he has to invent to save himself from such a humiliating situation, that, by way of elevating him, we first compare him to plants and flowers, and then actually try to keep him as far as possible in the state of physical immobility of vegetables, subjecting him to the same sensations, reducing him to slavery. But he never becomes the "plant with angelic perfume" we would fain believe him to be; rather do signs of corruption gradually manifest themselves as his "human substance" mortifies and dies.
But when we leave the child "free as a man" in the palestra of his own intelligence, his type changes entirely. It is of this type we must form new conceptions in discussing the question of "liberty."
That of intelligence should also, I believe, be the key to the problem of the social liberty of man. We have heard much talk of late years, of a very superficial kind, concerning "liberty of thought." The issue being obscured by prejudices akin to those prevalent concerning children, it has been supposed that man would be "liberated" were he "abandoned" to his own thoughts. But was he capable of "thinking"? Was not the epoch of such "freedom" also that of cerebral neurasthenia? Was it not also that epoch when laws for extending social rights to illiterates were under discussion?
Now let us take an example: if we told a sick person to choose between disease and health, would this make him free to do so? If we offer an uneducated peasant good and bad paper money, leaving him "free to choose" which he will take, and he chooses the bad notes, he is not free, he is cheated; if he chooses the good, he is not free, he is lucky. He will be free when he has sufficient knowledge not only to distinguish the good from the bad, but to understand the social utility of each. It is the giving of this "internal formation" which makes a man free, irrespective of a "social sanction" which is merely an external conquest of liberty. If the liberty of man were such a simple problem, we should only need to pass a law, enabling the blind to see and the deaf to hear, in order to restore "poor humanity" to health.
Our honesty ought to make us recognize one day that the fundamental rights of man are those of his own "formation," free from obstacles, free from slavery, and free to draw from his environment the means required for his development. In short, it is in education that we shall find the fundamental solution of the social problems connected with "personality."
Deeply instructive is the revelation made to us by the children, that "the intelligence" is the key which reveals the secrets of their formation, and is the actual means of their internal construction.
The hygiene of the intelligence thus assumes cardinal importance. When intelligence is recognized as the means of formation, the pivot of life itself, it can no longer be exhausted for dubious ends, or oppressed and suffocated without discernment.
At a not-far-distant day, the intelligence of children must become the object of treatment much wiser and more elaborate than that which we now bestow on their bodies, to adjuncts of which, such as teeth, nails, and hair, we devote costly and laborious processes. When we reflect that a mother who is perfectly conscious of the dangers and remedies connected with the hair of her child, can oppress and enslave his intelligence quite unknowingly, we are at once obliged to admit that the new road leading to civilization must needs be a long one, if such contrasts in our attitude to the superfluities and the essentials of life are still possible at the present day.
What is intelligence? Without rising to the heights of the definitions given by the philosophers, we may, for the moment, consider the sum of those reflex and associative or reproductive activities which enable the mind to construct itself, putting it into relation with the environment. According to Bain, the consciousness of difference is the beginning of every intellectual exercise; the first step of the mind is appreciation of "distinction." The bases of its perceptive functions towards the external world are the "sensations." To collect facts and distinguish between them is the initial process in intellectual construction.
Let us try to infuse a little more precision and clarity into the analysis of intelligence.
The first characteristic which presents itself to us as an indication of intellectual development is related to time. The masses are so much alive to this primitive characteristic, that the popular expression "quick" is synonymous with intelligent. To be rapid in reacting to a stimulus, in the association of ideas, in the capacity of formulating a judgment—this is the most obvious external manifestation of intelligence. This "quickness" is certainly related to the capacity for receiving impressions from the environment, elaborating images, and externalizing the internal results. All these activities may be developed by means of an exercise comparable to a system of mental "gymnastics" to collect numerous sensations, to put them constantly in relation one with another, to deduce judgments therefrom, to acquire the habit of manifesting these freely, all this ought, as the psychologists would say, to render the conductive channels and the associative channels more and more permeable, and the "period of reaction" ever briefer. As in intelligent muscular movement, the repetition of the act not only renders it more perfect in itself, but more rapid in execution. An intelligent child at school is not only one who understands, but one who understands quickly. On the other hand, one who learns the same things, but who takes a longer time in so doing, say two years instead of one, is slow. Of a "quick" child, the people say that "nothing escapes him"; his attention is always on the alert, and he is ready to receive every kind of stimulus: as a sensitive scale will show the slightest variation in weight, so the sensitive brain will respond to the slightest appeal. It is Equally rapid in its associative processes: "He understands in a flash" is a familiar saying to indicate accurate conception.
Now an exercise which "puts in motion" the intellectual mechanisms can only be an "auto-exercise." It is impossible that another person, exercising himself in our stead, should make us acquire skill.
The sensory exercises arouse and intensify the central activities in our children. When, sense and stimulus duly isolated, the child has clear perceptions in his consciousness; when sensations of heat, cold, roughness, smoothness, weight, and lightness, when a sound, an isolated noise, are perceived by him, when, in almost complete silence, he closes his eyes and waits for a voice to murmur a word, it is as if the external world had knocked at the door of his soul, awakening its activities. And further, when the multitudinous sensations are all contained in the richness of the environment, the two react harmoniously one upon the other, intensifying the activities that have been awakened: this is exemplified in the case of the child absorbed in coloring his designs, who will choose the most beautiful tints while music is being played, or in that of another who, contemplating the gay and gracious environment of the school and the flowering plants, will sing his song to perfection.
The first characteristic which manifests itself in our children, after their process of auto-education has been initiated, is that their reactions become ever more ready and more rapid: a sensory stimulus which might before have passed unobserved or might have roused a languid interest, is vividly perceived. The relation between things is easily recognized, and thus errors in their use are quickly detected, judged, and corrected. By means of the sensory gymnastics the child carries out just this primordial and fundamental exercise of the intelligence, which awakens and sets in motion the central nervous mechanisms.
When we see these external manifestations of our quick and active children—sensitive to the slightest call, ready to run swiftly towards us without relaxing the attention they give to their own movements and to all the external objects they encounter—and compare them with the torpid children in the ordinary schools—clumsy in their movements, indifferent to stimuli, incapable of spontaneous association of ideas—we are led to think of the civilization of our own days as compared with that of olden times. The civil environment of bygone years, as compared with our own, was more leisurely: we have learnt how to save time. The stage-coach was once the means of transport, whereas now we travel in motor-cars and even in aeroplanes; the voice was the medium of speech from a distance, whereas now we speak through the telephone; men killed each other one by one, whereas now they kill each other en masse. All this makes us realize that our civilization is not based upon "respect for life" and "respect for the soul," but rather is it based upon "respect for time." It is solely in an external sense that civilization has pursued its course. It has become more rapid, it has set in motion machinery.
But man has not had the same preparation to keep up with it: individuals have not accelerated themselves methodically; the children of this bewildering environment are not new men, more active, readier, more intelligent. The transformed human personality has not yet arisen ready to meet all eventualities and to utilize for his own benefit the external conquests of his environment. Torpid man saves time and money in this civilization; but his soul remains defrauded and oppressed.
If he does not rise to the task of reforming himself in harmony with the new world he has created, he runs the risk of being some day overthrown and crushed by it.
The swift reactions occurring among our children are not merely an external manifestation of the intelligence. They are related not only to the exercise, but also to the order which has been established within: and it is this intimate work of rearrangement which is in itself a more exact indication of intellectual formation.
Order is, in short, the true key to rapidity of reaction. In a chaotic mind, the recognition of a sensation is no less difficult than the elaboration of a reasoned discourse. In all things, social as well as others, it is organization and order which make it possible to proceed rapidly.
"To be able to distinguish" is the characteristic sign of intelligence: to distinguish is to arrange and also, in life, it is to prepare for "creation."
Creation finds its expansion in order. We find this conception in the Genesis of Scripture. God did not begin to create without preparation; and this preparation was the introduction of order into chaos. "And God divided the light from the darkness. And he said: Let the waters be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." The consciousness may possess a rich and varied content; but when there is mental confusion, the intelligence does not appear. Its appearance is exactly like the kindling of a light which makes it possible to distinguish things clearly: "Let there be light."
Thus we may justly say that to help the development of the intelligence is to help to put the images of the consciousness in order.
We ought to think of the mental state of the little child of three years old, who has already looked upon a world. How often he has fallen asleep utterly weary from having seen so many things. It has not occurred to any one that for him to walk is, in fact, to work; that seeing and hearing, when the organs are not as yet accommodated, so that he is obliged to be perpetually correcting the errors of his senses, and verifying with his hand what he cannot as yet appraise correctly with his eye, is a great exertion. Hence the little one who is over-taxed by stimuli, in places where these abound, cries or falls asleep.
The little child of three years old carries within him a heavy chaos.
He is like a man who has accumulated an immense quantity of books, piled up without any order, and who asks himself "What shall I do with them?" When will he be able to arrange them in such fashion as to enable him to say: "I possess a library"?
By means of our so-called "sensory exercises" we make it possible for the child to distinguish and to classify. Our sensory material, in fact, analyses and represents the attributes of things: dimensions, forms, colors, smoothness or roughness of surface, weight, temperature, flavor, noise, sounds. It is the qualities of the objects, not the objects themselves which are important; although these qualities, isolated one from the other, are themselves represented by objects. For the attributes long, short, thick, thin, large, small, red, yellow, green, hot, cold, heavy, light, rough, smooth, scented, noisy, resonant, we have a like number of corresponding "objects" arranged in graduated series. This gradation is important for the establishment of order; indeed, the attributes of the objects differ not only in quality, but also in quantity. They may be more or less high or more or less low, more or less thick or more or less thin; the sounds have various tones; the colors have various degrees of intensity; the shapes may resemble each other in varying degrees; the states of roughness and smoothness are by no means absolute.
The material for the education of the senses lends itself to the purpose of distinguishing between these things. First of all it enables the child to ascertain the identity of two stimuli by means of numerous exercises in matching and fitting. Afterwards difference is appreciated when the lessons direct the child's attention to the external objects of a series: light, dark, long, short.
At last he begins to distinguish the degrees of the various attributes, arranging a series of objects in gradation, such as the tablets which show the various degrees of intensity of the same chromatic tone; the bells which produce the notes of an octave, the objects which represent length in decimal proportions, or thickness in centimetric proportions, etc.
These exercises, which are so attractive to children, are, as we have seen, repeated by them indefinitely. The teacher puts the seal upon each acquisition with a word; thus the classification is complete, and finally has its schedule: that is, it becomes possible to recall the attribute and its image by a name.
Now as we have no possible means of distinguishing things other than by their attributes, the classification of these entails a fundamental order of arrangement comprehending everything. Henceforth the world is no longer a chaos for the child; his mind bears some resemblance to the orderly shelves of a library or a rich museum; each object is in its place, in its proper category. And each acquisition he makes will be no longer merely "stored," but duly "allocated." This primitive order will never be disturbed, but only enriched by fresh material.
Thus the child, having acquired the power of distinguishing one thing from another, has laid the foundations of the intelligence. It is unnecessary to repeat what an internal impulse the acquired order contributes towards the seeking after objects in the environment; henceforth the child "recognizes" the objects which surround him. When he discovers with so much emotion that the sky is blue, that his hand is smooth, that the window is rectangular, he does not in reality discover sky, nor hand, nor window, but he discovers their position in the order of his mind by arrangement of his ideas. And this determines a stable equilibrium in the internal personality, which produces calm, strength, and the possibility of fresh conquests, just as the muscles which have coordinated their functions enable the body to maintain its equilibrium, and to acquire that stability and security which facilitate all movements. This order conduces to an economy of time and strength; like a well-arranged museum, it saves the time and strength of inquirers. The child can therefore perform a greater quantity of work without fatigue, and can react to stimuli in a briefer space of time.
To be able to distinguish, classify, and catalogue external things on the basis of a secure order already established in the mind—this is at once intelligence and culture. This is, indeed, the popular conception; when an educated person can recognize an author by his style, or the characteristics of the literary compositions of a period, he is pronounced "versed (intelligente) in literature." In the same way we say of one who can recognize a painter by the manner in which he lays his colors on the canvas, or fix the period of a sculptor from the fragment of a bas-relief, that he is "versed (intelligente) in art." The scientist is of the same type. He is able to observe things, and to give due value even to their minutest details; hence the differences between the characteristics of things are clearly perceived and classified. The scientist distinguishes objects in accordance with the orderly content of his mind. A seedling, a microbe, an animal or the remains of an animal, are not enigmas to him, though in themselves they may be strange to him. We may say the same of the chemist, the physicist, the geologist, the archæologist.
It is not the accumulation of a direct knowledge of things which forms the man of letters, the scientist, and the connoisseur; it is the prepared order established in the mind which is to receive such knowledge. On the other hand, the uncultivated person has only the direct knowledge of objects; such a person may be a lady who spends a great part of the night reading books, or a gardener who spends his life making material distinctions between the plants in his garden. The knowledge of such uncultured minds is not only disorderly, but it is confined to the objects with which it comes into direct contact, whereas the knowledge of the scientist is infinite, because, possessing the power of classifying the attributes of things, he can recognize them all, and determine now the class, now the relationships, now the origins of each; facts much more profound than the actual things could of themselves reveal.
Now our children, after the manner of the connoisseur of art and the man of science, recognize objects in the external world by means of their attributes and classify them; hence they are sensitive to all objects; everything possesses a value for them. Uncultured children, on the other hand, pass blind and deaf close to things, just as an ignorant man passes by a work of art or listens to a performance of classical music without recognition or enjoyment.
The educational methods now in use proceed on lines exactly the reverse of ours; having first abolished spontaneous activity, they present objects with their accumulation of attributes directly to the child, calling attention to each attribute, and hoping that from all this mass the mind of the child will be able to abstract the attributes themselves, without any guidance or order. Thus they create in a passive being an artificial chaos, more limited than that which the natural world would offer.
The "objective" method now in use, which consists in presenting an object and noting all its attributes—that is, describing it, is nothing but a "sensory" variation on the customary mnemonic method; instead of describing an absent object, a present object is described; instead of the imagination alone working to effect its reconstruction, the senses intervene; this is done so that the distinctive qualities of the object itself should be better remembered. The passive mind receives images, which are limited to the objects presented; and which are "stored up" without any order. As a fact, every object may have infinite attributes; and if, as often happens in object-lessons, the origins and ultimate ends of the object itself are included among these attributes, the mind has literally to range throughout the universe. If, for instance, in an object lesson on coffee, which I heard given in a Kindergarten school, the object is described and the attention of the children directed to its size, its color, its shape, its aroma, its flavor, its temperature; and then if the teacher goes on to describe the plant and the manner in which the substance was brought to Europe across the ocean, and, finally, lighting a spirit-lamp, boils the water, grinds the berries and prepares the beverage, the mind has been led to wander in infinite spaces, but the subject has not been exhausted. For it would be possible to go on to describe the exciting effects of coffee, caffeine, which is extracted from the berry, and many other things. Such an analysis would spread like spilt oil until finally dispersed, and the outcome would be of no use in any way. If, indeed, we should ask a child so instructed: "What is coffee, then?" he might well reply: "It is such a long story that I cannot remember it." A notion so vague (I cannot certainly say so complete!) fatigues and encumbers the mind and can never transform itself into a dynamic excitation of similar associations. The efforts the child makes will be, at the most, efforts of memory to recall the history of coffee. If associations are formed in his mind, they will be inferior associations of contiguity: his mind will wander from the teacher who is speaking to the ocean that was traversed, to the dining-table at home on which coffee appears in cups every day; in other words, it will stray aimlessly as does the idle mind when it "allows itself" to wander from the continuity of its passive associations.
In this kind of reverie to which the minds of children give themselves up, there is no sign of internal activity, far less of any individual difference. Children subjected to the object-lesson system always remain purely receptive beings; or, if we prefer to put it so, storehouses in which new objects are continually deposited.
No activity is thus aroused and directed towards the object, in order to recognize its qualities in such a manner that the child himself forms an idea of it; nor can the possibility of connecting other objects with the first by their common characteristics arise in his mind. For in what particular does any object resemble the others? In its use?
When we associate the images of different objects by similarity, we should extract from the whole the qualities which the objects themselves have in common. If, for instance, we say that two rectangular tablets are alike, we have first extracted from the numerous qualities of these tablets such facts as that they are of wood, that they are polished, smooth, colored, of the same temperature, etc., the quality relating to their shape. They are alike in shape. This may suggest a long series of objects: the top of the table, the window, etc.; but before such a result as this can be achieved, it is necessary that the mind should first be capable of abstracting from the numerous attributes of these objects the quality of rectangular shape. The work of the mind in this quest must necessarily be active; it analyzes the object, extracts a determined attribute therefrom, and under the guidance of this determined attribute makes a synthesis associating many objects by the same medium of connection. If this capacity for the selecting of single attributes among all those proper to the object be not acquired, association by means of similarity, synthesis, and all the higher work of the intelligence becomes impossible. Moreover, this is intellectual work in reality, because the essential quality of the intelligence is not to "photograph" objects, and "keep them one upon the other" like the pages of an album, or juxtaposed like the stones in a pavement. Such a labor of mere "deposit" is an outrage on the intellectual nature. The intelligence, with its characteristic orderliness and power of discrimination, is capable of distinguishing and extracting the dominant characteristics of objects, and it is upon these that it proceeds to build up its internal structures.
Now our children, whose minds are thus ordered in relation to the classification of attributes by the pedagogic aid they have received, are led, not only to observe objects according to all the attributes they have analyzed, but also to distinguish identities, differences, and resemblances; and this work renders the extraction of one of the qualities corresponding to one of the sensory groups which have been considered apart, easy and spontaneous. That is to say, it will be easy for the child thus to recognize the various qualities of an object, to note, for instance, that certain objects are alike in form, or alike in color; because "forms" and "colors" have already been grouped into very distinctive categories, and they therefore recall series of objects by similarity. This classification of attributes is a kind of loadstone; it is an attractive force of a determined group of qualities; and the objects which have this quality are attracted thereto and united one with another; this is association by similitude, almost of a mechanical kind. Books are of the shape of prisms, one of our children might say; and such a pronouncement would be the conclusion arrived at by a very complex mental process, were it not that prismatic forms already existed as a well-defined series in his mind, attracting to itself all the surrounding objects which possess the same character. Thus the whiteness of sheets of paper, interrupted by dark signs, may be attracted, by the colors systematized in the mind, into a synthetic whole, which might make the child say: Books are sheets of white printed paper.
It is in this active work that individual differences may manifest themselves. What will be the group of attributes which will attract similar objects? And what will be the prevailing characteristic chosen for the purpose of association by similarity? One child will note that a curtain is light green; another that the same curtain is light in weight; one will be struck by the whiteness of a hand, another by the smoothness of its skin. For one child the window will be a rectangle; to another it is something through which the blue of the sky may be seen. The choice of prevailing characteristics made by children becomes a "natural selection" harmonizing with their own innate tendencies.
In like manner, a scientist will choose the characters most useful to his associations. An anthropologist may choose the shape of the head to distinguish the human races, and another might choose the cutaneous pigment—either will serve the purpose. Each anthropologist may have the most accurate knowledge of the external characteristics of men; but the important matter consists in finding a characteristic which will serve as a basis for classification: that is to say, a characteristic on which it will be possible to group numerous characteristics in the order of similitude. Purely practical persons would consider man from the utilitarian rather than from the scientific point of view; a maker of hats would single out the dimensions of the head from among other human characteristics; an orator would consider man from the point of view of his susceptibility to the spoken word. But selection is the fundamental necessity which enables us to realize things; to emerge from the vague into the practical, from aimless contemplation into the sphere of action.
Every created thing in existence is characterized by the fact that it has limitations. Our own psycho-sensory organization is founded upon a selection. What are the functions of the senses, but to respond to a determined series of vibrations and to no others? Thus the eye limits light and the ear sounds. In forming the contents of the mind the first step is, therefore, a selection, necessarily and materially limited. Nevertheless, the mind imposes still further limits on the selection possible to the senses, fashioning it upon the activity of internal choice. Thus attention is fixed upon determined objects and not upon all objects; and the volition chooses the actions which are really to be performed from among a multitude of possible actions.
It is in like fashion that the lofty work of the intelligence is accomplished; by an analogous action of attention and internal will, it abstracts the dominant characteristics of things, and thus succeeds in associating their images, and keeping them in the foreground of consciousness. It ceases to consider an immense amount of ballast which would render its context formless and confused. Every superior mind distinguishes the essential form from the superfluous, rejecting the latter, and thus it is enabled to achieve its characteristic, clear, delicate, and vital activities. It is capable of extracting that which is useful to its creative life, and thus finds in the cosmos the means of salvation. Without this characteristic activity, the intelligence cannot construct itself; it would be like an attention that wanders from thing to thing without ever fixing upon any one of them, and like a will that can never decide upon any definite action.
"It is possible to suppose," says James, "that a God could, without impairing his activity, simultaneously behold all the minutest portions of the world. But if our human attention should be thus dissipated, we should merely contemplate all things vacuously, without ever finding occasion to do any particular act."
It is one of the marvelous phenomena of life that it is impossible to realize anything, without determining limits; that mysterious law which ordains that every living being has its "form" and "stature," unlike the minerals, which are indefinite in form and dimensions, is repeated in the psychical life. Its development, its auto-creation, is nothing but a determination even more precise, a progressive "concentration"; it is thus that from the primitive chaos our internal characteristic form is gradually shaped and chiselled.
The capacity for forming a conception of a thing, for judging and reasoning, has always this foundation. When, after having noted the usual qualities of a column, we abstract the general truth that the column is a support, this synthetic idea is based upon a selected quality. Thus in the judgment we may pronounce: columns are cylindrical, we have abstracted one quality from among the many others we could have adduced, as, columns are cold, they are hard, they are a composition of carbonate of lime, etc. It is only the capacity for such a selection which makes reasoning possible. When, for example, in the demonstration of the theorem of Pythagoras, children handle the various pieces of the metal insets, they should start from the point at which they become aware that a rectangle is equal to the rhomb, and a square is equal to the same rhomb. It is the perception of this truth which makes it possible to go on to the following reasoning: therefore the square and the rectangle are equal to each other. If it had not been possible to determine this attribute, the mind could not have arrived at any conclusion. The mind has succeeded in discovering an attribute common to two dissimilar figures; and it is this discovery which may lead to a series of conclusions by means of which the theorem of Pythagoras will be finally demonstrated.
Now, as in the case of will, decision presupposes a methodical exercise of the impulsive and inhibitory forces, only to be performed by the individual himself, until habits have been established, so in case of the intelligence, the individual must exercise himself in his activities of association and selection, guided and aided by external means, until he has developed, by the definitive elimination of certain ideas and the choice of others, "mental habits" characteristic of the individual, characteristic of the "type." Because, underlying all the internal activities the mind can construct, there is, as the phenomena of attention show us, the individual tendency, the "nature."
There is, undoubtedly, a fundamental difference between understanding and learning the reasoning of others, and being able "to reason," between learning how an artist may see the external world according to his prevailing interest in color, harmony, and form, and actually seeing the external world about a fulcrum which sustains one's own æsthetical creation. In the mind of one who "learns the things of others" we may find, as in a sack of old clothes hanging over the shoulders of a hawker, solutions of the problems of Euclid, together with the images of Raphael's works, ideas of history and geography, and rules of style, huddled together with a like indifference and a like sensation of "weight." While, on the other hand, he who uses all these things for his own life, is like the person who is assisted in attaining his own welfare, his own relief, his own comfort by those same objects which are merely burdens when in the sack of the hawker. Such objects are, however, no longer huddled together without order and without purpose in a closed bag, but set out in the spacious rooms of a well-ordered house. The mind which constructs may contain a great deal more than that mind in which pieces of knowledge are heaped up as in the bag; and in that mind, as in the house, the objects are clearly divided one from another, harmoniously arranged, and distinctive in their uses.
Between "understanding" because another person seeks to impress upon us the explanation of a thing by speech, and "understanding" the thing of ourselves, there is an immeasurable distance; the two are comparable to the impression made in soft wax, which will subsequently be effaced and replaced by other impressions, and the form chiselled in the marble by an artist, as his creation. He who understands of himself has an unforeseen impression; he feels that his consciousness has been liberated, and something luminous shines forth within him. Understanding, then, is not a matter of indifference; it is the beginning of something; sometimes it is the beginning of a life which renews itself within us. Perhaps no emotion is more fruitful for man than the intellectual emotion. He who makes a discovery rich in results certainly enjoys the greatest of human felicities; but even he who merely "understands" gets a lofty enjoyment which will rise superior to and overcome the most acute suffering. Indeed, he who is oppressed by a misfortune, if he can be brought to differentiate his own case from that of another, or to see a reason for his affliction, experiences relief, and a "sense of salvation." Amidst the confused darkness in which he was plunged, a consoling ray of intellectual light has reached him. The difficult matter, indeed, is to find the way of escape in the hour of darkness. When we reflect that a dog may die of grief on the grave of his master, and that a mother can survive on the grave of her only son, we see at once that it is the light of reason which makes the difference between the two. The dog cannot reason on the matter; it may die because no light can penetrate the darkness of its intelligence to overcome the depression of its grief.
But the thought of a universal justice, the living memory of the lost one which remains to us, saves the human being. And by degrees, not forgetfulness, which alone can save the animal, but the connection which the intelligence establishes with the universe, restores calm to the suffering soul. Such comfort could never be derived from the dry lesson of a professor, from memorizing the theory of a savant who is not in sympathy with the state of our soul. When we say, "to give ourselves a reason," "to derive strength from a principle," we imply that the ever-inquiring intelligence should be left at liberty to perform its work of reconstruction and salvation.
Now if intelligence in "comprehending" may actually prove our salvation when in danger of death, what a source of enjoyment it should prove to man!
When we talk of "the opening of the mind," we mean a creative phenomenon, which is not the weak result of an impression violently made from without. The opening of the mind is the active comprehension which accompanies great emotions, and which is therefore felt as a spiritual event.
I once knew a motherless girl, who was so much depressed by the arid teaching of her school, that she had become almost incapable of study and even of understanding the things which were taught her. Her life of solitude, lacking in natural affection, was a further aggravation of her mental fatigue. Her father decided that she should live for a year or two in the open country like a little savage; he then brought her back to town, and placed her under the private direction of a number of "professors." The girl studied and learned, but remained passive and weary. Every now and then her father would say: "Is your mind opening again?" and the girl always replied: "I do not know. What do you mean?" Owing to a curious coincidence in my life, this girl was confided to my sole care; and it was thus that I, when I was still a medical student, made my first pedagogic experiment, upon which I cannot linger now, though it would be worthy of interest. One day we were together and when she was at work on organic chemistry, she broke off, and looking at me with beaming eyes, said: "Here it is now! I do understand!" She then got up and went away, calling out aloud: "Father, father! My mind has opened!" I, not then knowing the girl's history, was astonished and agitated. She had taken her father's hand, and was saying: "Now I can tell you, yes, yes; I did not know what it meant before; my mind has opened." The joy of father and daughter and their union at that moment made me think of the joys and wellsprings of life which we destroy by enslaving the intelligence.
Indeed, every intellectual conquest is a wellspring of joy to our free children. This is the "pleasure" to which they are now most susceptible, and which makes them scorn lower pleasures; it is after having tasted of this that; our little ones despise sweetmeats, toys, and vanities.
It is this which makes them sublime to the eyes of those who contemplate them.
Their pleasure is that lofty pleasure which distinguish man from the brute, and can save us even from the desolation of grief and darkness.
When it is made a reproach to our method that it seeks to promote the "pleasure" of the child, and that this is immoral, it is the child and not the method which is insulted. For the essence of this reproach is the calumny against the child, who is considered by all as on a level with the beasts, and whose "pleasure" is supposed to lie solely in gluttony and idleness, and worse. But none of these could keep the child's "pleasure" alive for hours and days and years. It is only when he has laid hold on "humane pleasure" that he persists in it, and lives with a joy which is comparable to that of the young girl who ran to her father to proclaim the end of the darkness in which she had languished for years.
May it not perhaps be that those "crises," which are to-day but the intellectual illuminations of genius when it discovers a truth, represent a natural phenomenon of psychical life? May not the manifestation of the genius be but the manifestation of a "vigorous life," saved from perils by its exceptional individuality, and therefore itself alone capable of revealing the true nature of man? His type would then be the common one, and all men, in a greater or less degree, would seem to be of the same "species." The paths the child follows in the active "construction" of his individuality are indeed identical with those followed by the genius. His characteristics are absorbed attention, a profound concentration which isolates him from all the stimuli of his environment, and corresponds in intensity and duration to the development of spiritual activities. As in genius, this concentration is not without results, but is the source of intellectual crises, of rapid internal developments, and, above all, of an "external activity" which expresses itself in work.
We may say, then, that the genius is the man who has burst his bonds asunder, who has maintained his liberty, and who has upheld before the eyes of the multitude the standard of the humanity conquered by him.
Nearly all the manifestations of those men who liberated themselves from the external bondage of their times are to be noted in our children. Such, for instance, is that sublime "spiritual obedience," at present still unknown to the majority of mankind, with the exception of monks, who, however, often recognize it only in theory, and contemplate it only in the examples given by the saints; such again are those means necessary to the construction of a strong internal life which form part of the preparation for the cloistered life in the methodical "meditations" of those about to enter upon it. No persons, with the exception of monks, practise meditation. We can hardly distinguish meditation from methods for "learning" intellectually. We know, for example, that to read a great number of books consecutively, dissipates our powers and our capacity for thought; and that to learn a piece of poetry by heart means to repeat it until it is engraven on our minds: and that all this is not "meditation."
He who commits a verse of Dante to memory and he who meditates upon a verse of the gospel, performs a totally different task. The canto will "adorn" the mind on which it is impressed for a certain time, without leaving any lasting trace upon it. The verse which has been the subject of meditation will have a transforming and edifying effect. He who meditates clears his mind as far as possible of every other image, and tries to concentrate upon the subject of meditation in such a manner that all the internal activities will be polarised thereby: or, as the monks say, "all the powers of the mind."
The expected result of the meditation is "an internal fruit of strength"; the soul is strengthened and unified, it becomes active; it can then act upon the seed around which it has concentrated and cause it to become fruitful.
Now the method chosen by our children in following their natural development is "meditation," for in no other way would they be led to linger so long over each individual task, and so to derive a gradual internal maturation therefrom. The aim of the children who persevere in their work with an object, is certainly not to "learn"; they are drawn to it by the needs of their inner life, which must be organized and developed by its means. In this manner they imitate and carry on their "growth." This is the habit by which they gradually coordinate and enrich their intelligence. As they meditate, they enter upon that path of progress which will continue without end.
It is after an exercise of meditation on the objects that our children become capable of enjoying "the silence exercise"; and then, having been rendered delicately susceptible to impressions, they try to make no noise when they move, to refrain from awkward actions, because they are enjoying the fruit of the "concentration" of the spirit.
It is thus that their personality is unified and strengthened. The exercise which serves as the means to this end is designed gradually to perfect the accuracy with which they perceive the external world, observing, reasoning, and correcting the errors of the senses in a sustained and spontaneous activity. It is they who act, they who choose the objects, they who persevere in their work, they who seek to win from their environment the possibility of concentrating their minds upon it. Each one of them moves in obedience to the motor power within him. They are not disturbed by a teacher, by a being obviously superior to themselves, who intimidates the shrinking poverty of those who are beginning life by her lofty intellectual riches, who darkens rather than illuminates, who wearies rather than refreshes; but they live in peace with her who, almost a priestess, is yet a servant. As in some ideal convent, humility, simplicity, and work make up the environment where he who meditates will some day feel within himself the clearness of vision, the intuition, almost the sensibility, which make one ready to receive the truth.
To a different end, but by the same road, amidst the silence, the simplicity, and the humility of the monastery, the spirit prepares itself to receive the faith at the outset of life.
Many years ago, when I first received the impression that our children revealed general principles of life which in practise we are only privileged to encounter among the intellectual and spiritual élite of society, and that for this reason they were at the same time the revealers of a form of unconscious oppression which weighed down humanity, deforming the inner life, I spoke at length upon the matter to an intellectual lady, who was much interested in my "theories," and very anxious that I should make them the subject of an elaborate philosophical treatise; but she could not bring herself to accept the idea that it was a question of an experimental process. When I spoke of the children, she showed some impatience: "Oh, yes, I quite understand all about these children; in intelligence they are so many geniuses, and in goodness so many angels." But when, after some persuasion, I succeeded in making her come and see for herself, she took my hands and looked earnestly in my face: "Have you never thought," she asked, "that you may die at any moment?... Write at once, anyhow, in all haste, as you would write a will, a simple description of the facts, that you may not carry away this secret with you to the grave."
Nevertheless, I was in excellent health.
If we examine the mental labors of men of genius to whom we owe discoveries which have opened new paths to thought, and have given us new sources of well-being and social progress, we shall have to admit that in themselves they cannot be described as extraordinary processes, inaccessible to mediocrity. "Genius coincides with the possession in a very high degree of the power of association by similarity. This is the essential quality of genius," says Bain. Even at the "central point" of discovery, it is only by accurate observation and a very simple process of reasoning, of which most persons would consider themselves capable, that the discovery is made. At most it is due to a marshalling of "evidences" which, however, passed unnoticed by all but the discoverer.
We may say that genius has the faculty of isolating a fact in the consciousness, and of so distinguishing it from all others that it is as if a single ray of light should fall upon a diamond in a dark room. This single idea, then, causes a complete revolution in the consciousness, and is capable of constructing something infinitely great and precious for all humanity.
But it is the intense significance of ordinary things, and not the abnormal, which is the main factor; it is the isolation in a homogeneous field, not the intrinsic value of the thing, which determines the marvelous phenomenon. Perhaps within countless thousands of chaotic perceptions the gem had existed, stored up amidst a multitude of useless and cumbrous objects, and had never succeeded in arresting attention; meanwhile inertia continued to allow new objects to penetrate continually within the distended and impotent walls. After a discovery, many will perceive that they themselves held the same truth within them; but in this case it is not the truth itself that has value, but the man who is capable of appreciating it and bringing it into relation with action.
But very often it is not the case that the newly discovered truth already exists in the chaos of obscure consciousness; and then the new light, simple though it be, can find no way by which to penetrate into the mind.
It is rejected as something strange and fallacious; and a certain lapse of time is necessary, a certain coordination of the intelligence, to enable the "novelty" to enter. Yet some day it will be considered clear as crystal. It was not the "nature" of man which shrank from it, but his "errors." These errors not only make man incapable of production, but are in themselves hostile to receptivity. Thus it often happens that the pioneers of salvation are persecuted by a sort of unconscious ingratitude, which is the fruit of spiritual darkness.
What was the argument of Christopher Columbus? He thought: "If the earth is really round, he who starts from a certain point and advances steadily, will return to the point of departure." This was the sum of the intellectual work which enriched mankind with a new world.
That a great continent should have lain in the track of Columbus, and that he should have encountered this and not death, was the destiny due to the chance of environment. The environment sometimes rewards "small reasonings" of this kind in a surprising manner.
It was certainly not a great labor of human intelligence which brought about these great results; it was the triumph of this idea over the whole consciousness, and the heroic courage of the man, which gave it its value. The great difficulty, for the man who had conceived the idea, was to persevere until he could persuade others to help him in his enterprise, to give him ships and followers. It was the faith and not the idea of Columbus which triumphed.
That simple and logical reasoning kindled within him something infinitely more precious than intelligence, and enabled a single man of humble origin, and almost uneducated, to present a world to a queen.
We are told that Alessandro Volta's wife was ill with fever, and that he, in accordance with the practise of his day, was preparing the usual febrifuge, a broth of skinned frogs; it was a rainy day, and when he hung up the dead frogs on the iron bar of the window, he noticed that their legs contracted. "If dead muscles contract, it must mean that some external force has penetrated them." This was the simple argument of the "genius," the "great discoverer." And seeking this force, Volta, by means of his piles, was able to wrest from the earth electricity, which is, literally as well as figuratively, the "gleam" of an immense progress. Laying due weight upon a little fact, such as that of a dead being having moved, considering it soberly without any fanciful additions, and fixing the mind upon the resulting problem: Why does it move?—such was the lengthy process by which one of the greatest conquests of civilization was achieved.
Akin to this was Galileo's discovery, when, standing in Pisa Cathedral, he watched the oscillations of a hanging lamp. He observed that the oscillations were all completed in the same space of time, and the isochronism of the pendulum was the beginning of the measurement of time for all men, and of the measurement of worlds for the astronomer.
How simple, too, is the story of Newton, who felt an apple fall upon him as he lay under a tree, and thought to himself: "Why did that apple fall?" Such was the simple origin of the theory of the gravity of bodies, and that of universal gravitation.
When we study of the life of Papin, we marvel at the culture which placed him on a level with the most learned men of his times: as physician, physiologist, and mathematician, he was distinguished and honored by the universities of England and Germany. Nevertheless, what gave him his value to humanity, and hence his greatness, was the fact that his attention had been arrested by the sight of the lid of a saucepan of boiling water raised by the steam. "Steam is a force which could lift a piston as it lifts the cover of a saucepan, and become the motor power of a machine." Papin's famous saucepan is a kind of magic wand in the history of mankind, which thenceforth began to work and travel without fatigue. How wonderful are such stories of great discoveries arising from humble beginnings, and working miracles throughout the world!
These, in their origins, resemble those living creatures, born of two imperceptible microscopic cells, the fusion of which inevitably tends to the creation of complex lives. To perceive exactly and to connect the things perceived logically is the work of the highest intelligence. But this work is characterized by a peculiar power of attention, which causes the mind to dwell upon a subject in a species of meditation, the characteristic mark of genius; the outcome is an internal life rich in activities, just as the germinative cells are the fruit of internal existences. It would seem that such mentalities are distinguished from those of the ordinary type, not by their form, but by their "force." It is the vigorous life from which those two small intellectual sparks arise, which makes them so marvelous. If they had not sprung from strong, independent personalities, capable of persistent effort and heroic self-sacrifice, those little intellectual works would have remained as things inert and negligible. Hence all that strengthens the spiritual man may lead him in the footsteps of the genius.
Thus, as regards the intelligence in itself, the work it has to accomplish is a small matter, but it is clearly defined, and stripped of superfluous complications. Simplicity is the guide to discovery; simplicity which, like truth, should be naked. Very little is necessary; but this little must constitute a powerful unity; the rest is vanity.
And the greater this vanity, that is to say, the futile encumbrance of the mind, the more will the light of the spirit be darkened and its forces dissipated, making it difficult or impossible not only to reason and act, but even to perceive reality, to see.
It would be interesting to make a rapid survey of those collective individual errors by which the progress of a new discovery of a simple kind, offering relief to suffering humanity, has been impeded; errors which have even caused persistent denial of the existence of obvious facts, merely because these were not generally known.
Let us consider for a moment the discovery of the cause of malaria. This discovery, due to the Englishman, Ross, in connection with birds, and to the Italian, Grassi, in connection with man, consists in having found out that the plasmodium of malaria, which produces the malady, is inoculated in man and in the various animals subject to it, by a special kind of mosquito. Let us inquire what was the state of science prior to this discovery. In 1880 Laveran had described an animal micro-organism, which preyed upon the red corpuscles of the blood, producing an attack of fever with the cycle of its existence. Subsequent studies confirmed and elucidated this fact, and the plasmodium malariae became a matter of common knowledge. It was known that animal micro-organisms, unlike vegetable micro-organisms, after a cycle of life in which reproduction takes place by scission—that is, by subdivision of a single body into several other bodies equal to the first, give place to sexual forms, masculine and feminine, which are separate, and incapable of scission, but are designed for fusion into one another, after which the organism recommences its cycle of scissions until it again reaches the sexual forms.
Laveran had found that in the blood of sufferers who recover spontaneously from malarial fever there are a great number of corpuscles which have no longer the rounded forms of the plasmodia, but are crescent-shaped and rayed. He took these to be transformations of the plasmodia, "modified in form" and "incapable of producing disease," and pronounced them to be "degenerate" organisms, almost as if they had been deformed and exhausted by the "excess of work" they had previously performed. These organisms were described as "Laveran's degenerative forms." After the discovery of the transmission of malaria in 1900, Laveran's "degenerative forms" were recognized as the sexual individuals of the reproductive cycle: individuals which were incapable of conjugation in the blood of man, and could only produce new organisms in the body of the mosquito. We may well wonder: Why did not Laveran simply recognize those sexual forms, and why did he not seek for the period of conjugation in the plasmodia, which were animal micro-organisms? If he had borne in mind the complete cycle of the protozoa, he would have recognized them. But evidently Morel's theories of the degeneration of man had made a much livelier impression on his imagination; and his leap from these remote theories to his interpretation of the plasmodia seemed an achievement of "genius." It may be said that this "feat of genius," this visionary generalization, prevented Laveran from seeing the truth. A form of arrogance and levity is apparent in such errors.
Moreover, we are astonished by something still more serious: how came it that hundreds and thousands of students throughout the world accepted Laveran's error with their eyes shut, that not one among so many took into consideration on his own account the cycle of the protozoa, and that not one was sufficiently independent to set about studying the phenomenon for himself? What is this mental form of inertia? and why does it produce itself in man? All these disciples, heedless of the problem presented to their minds by the sexual form of the plasmodium, left it alone, although it had not yet been solved, and certainly had no intuition of the fame, the progress in science, and the benefit to humanity which would have been the outcome, had the problem constituted an obstacle which had arrested their attention, saying: "Solve me."
They passed on indifferently, commending Laveran's "effort of genius," repeating with him: They are degenerate forms. A futile effort, which only increased a crowd of persons who had resigned their own individuality all unconsciously.
Another biological acquisition was the assurance that the circulatory system of the blood is a closed system of vessels, and that the enclosing epithelium is not permeable by non-incisive solid bodies such as vegetable microbes, and still less by rounded protozoa, which are much larger than microbes and soft in substance. This well-known and clearly demonstrated fact ought to have suggested a problem to the minds of students: How do the protozoa of malaria enter the circulatory current of the blood? But ever since the days of Hippocrates, Pliny, Celsius and Galen it had been held that this fever was caused by the "poisonous atmosphere" of marsh lands, the bad air of the morning and the evening, so much so that even a few years before the discovery of the real cause of malaria, eucalyptus trees were planted in the belief that they would filter and disinfect the air. How was it that no one asked himself how it was possible that the plasmodia could enter the current of the blood from the air? What was the species of torpor which took possession of the intelligence of persons who had specialized in intellectual work? Here was a colossal sum of intelligence, without any individuality.
Until Ross discovered that birds are inoculated with malaria by a particular kind of mosquito.
And then, behold! we have at last the fundamental argument from which the knowledge of the truth sprang forth: "If birds are inoculated with malaria by mosquitoes, then the same thing must happen to man."
A simple argument, which sped like an arrow to the final discovery. Nothing seemed more incredible than the fact that in the malarial regions good air and fertile soil were to be found, that it was possible to breathe that air morning and evening and remain in perfect health, so long as one was not bitten by mosquitoes, and that the innumerable peasants who were wasted by malarial anemia would be saved and restored if they protected themselves by mosquito-netting. But after the first stupefaction, when men were convinced of the facts, there was an outcry from all the intelligent: How was it possible that we did not find it out before? Was not the cycle of the protozoa a well-known fact? Did not every one declare that the system of circulation was closed and impervious to micro-organisms? Was it not natural to think that only a blood-sucking insect could innoculate it?
How many students felt that glory had passed close to them, and were amazed and saddened by the knowledge, like the disciples of Emmäus, who said to each other when the Master disappeared before they recognized Him: "Did not our hearts burn within us when He spoke and expounded the Scriptures to us?"
Many must have thought: We worked so laboriously only to encumber our minds, and yet but one thing was needful: we should have been humble and simple, but independent. Instead, we filled our souls with darkness, and the ray that would have made us see, could not penetrate to us.
Let us take some grosser errors. As far back as the days of the Greek civilization it was known empirically that "stones can fall from the sky." Falls of aërolites are recorded in the most ancient Chinese chronicles. In the Middle Ages and in modern times intimations of the fall of aërolites have increased in frequency. Remarkable facts are indeed recorded in history in connection with similar phenomena: the meteorite which fell in 1492 served the Emperor Maximilian I of Germany as a pretext to excite Christendom to a war against the Turks. Nevertheless, the phenomenon was not admitted by men of science until the eighteenth century. One of the largest meteorites on record was that which fell near Agram in 1751; it weighed about forty kilogrammes, and was deposited and catalogued in the court mineralogical museum at Vienna. This is what Stütz, a German savant, had to say on the subject in 1790: "Those ignorant of natural history may believe that iron has fallen from the sky, and even educated men in Germany may have believed this in 1751, taking into account the universal ignorance then prevalent as to natural history and physics; but in our times it would be unpardonable to admit even the plausibility of such fables."
In the same year 1790, an aërolite weighing ten kilogrammes fell in Gascony. It was observed by a large number of persons, and an official report, signed by three hundred witnesses, was sent to the Academy of Paris. The reply was that "it had been very amusing to receive a legal document dealing with such an absurdity." [7]
When, a few years later, Chladni of Wittenberg, the founder of scientific acoustics, began to admit the phenomenon and to believe in the existence of aërolites, he was stigmatized as "a man who was ignorant of every law and who did not consider the damage he was doing in the moral world"; and one savant declared that "if he had himself seen iron fall from the sky at his own feet, he would not have believed it."
This was incredulity greater than that of St Thomas, who said: "Unless I can touch I will not believe." Here were pieces of iron weighing ten and forty kilogrammes, which could be touched, but the savant said: "Even if I touch them, I will not believe."
It is, therefore, not enough to see in order to believe; we must believe in order to see. It is faith which leads to sight, not sight which produces faith. When the blind man in the gospel uttered the anxious cry: "Make me to see," he asked for "faith," because he knew that it is possible to have eyes and not to see.
The fact of being insensible to evidence is little considered in psychology, much less is it taken into account in pedagogic laws. And yet many similar facts, though of an inferior psychological order, are notorious, as, for instance, that stimuli will appeal in vain to the senses, if the internal cooperation of attention be lacking. A thousand experiences of this kind enter in to make up the sum of common knowledge. It is not enough that an object should be before our eyes to make us see it; it is necessary that we should fix our attention upon it; an internal process, preparing us to receive the impression of the stimulus, is essential.
In a loftier and purely spiritual sphere something of the same kind takes place: an idea cannot enter triumphantly into the consciousness, if it is not accompanied by a preparation of faith. Lacking this, it may knock violently and brutally, with clamorous insistence, without being able to penetrate. It is necessary that the field of consciousness should be not only free, but "expectant." He who is bewildered by a chaos of ideas cannot accept a truth which arrives unexpectedly in the unprepared field.
This fact is not only analogous to other psychical facts of less importance, such as that of sensory perception in relation to attention; it is also analogous to the spiritual facts which are so well known in the field of religion. In vain will a fact, however remarkable, be explained or even demonstrated where there is no faith; it is not evidence but faith which opens the mind to truth. The very senses are useless as a medium if the internal activity does not open the doors to receive it. When the most striking miracles of Christ are related in the gospel, the narrative always concludes with: "And many of those who saw, believed." The parable of the invitation to the feast, to which those who were absorbed in their own affairs could not respond, seems to indicate a fact similar to this intellectual fact, that the "preoccupations" of complicated pre-existing ideas prevent the new and obvious truth that presents itself, from entering in. It is for this reason that we need the Precursor to make ready for the Messiah. And for this reason the Messiah, and also new ideas, are readily received by the "simple," by those who are not "laden with heavy preoccupations," but have preserved the natural characteristics of the spirit: to be pure and always "expectant."
When in 1628 Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, physiology was almost unknown, and medicine was in the full tide of empiricism. It is well known that the Faculty of Medicine of Paris refused to believe in circulation, in spite of experiments, and that it persecuted and calumniated Harvey. "That which pleases me in my son," said Diafoirus, "and in which he follows my example, is, that he remains faithful to the opinions of our ancient teachers, and that he has always refused either to understand or to listen to the arguments and experiments of the pretended discoveries of our century, especially as regards the circulation of the blood."
The history of the discovery of germinative foliations in the embryonic development of vertebrates forms one of the most impressive of human documents. In 1700 the theory of pre-formation was vigorously upheld amongst the many ideas relating to generation: that is to say, it was believed that the germs contained little organisms completely formed which would eventually unfold and increase the parts of infinitesimal dimensions which were packed one within the other. This theory applied to every living creature, animal, vegetable, and human. It had led, by its own logical development, to the more far-reaching theory of "mutual inclusion"—that is, the doctrine that, as all living organisms are pre-formed, they must of necessity all have existed from the Creation, the one included, or wrapped up, in the other. All humanity must have lain in the ovaries of Eve. When in 1690 Leuwenhoek discovered spermatozoa by the aid of the microscope, the idea was evolved that each male cell contained a complete microscopic man, the homunculus; and then it was announced that not Eve, but Adam had contained all humanity within himself. Hence the two contradictory theories which in the eighteenth century kept their adherents sharply divided, the theories of the ovulists and those of the animalculists, and the dispute seemed to offer little hope of a possible decision. The names of famous scientists and philosophers were associated with these dissensions, those, for instance, of Spallanzani and of Liebnitz, who applied the principles of generation even to the soul. "Thus I should think," said Liebnitz, "that the souls which will one day become human souls, were present in the germ; that they have always existed as organized bodies in their progenitors from Adam onwards—that is, from the beginning of things." [8]
Haller, the ovulist, who had great authority as a physiologist, in a famous work, Elementa physiologiae, upheld the principle vigorously: "Nulla est epigenesis. Nulla in corpore animale pars ante aliam facta est et omnes simul creatae existunt" (nothing is created anew, no part of the human body is made before any other part, all are created at the same time). Making a calculation based on Biblical cosmogony of the number of human beings who were packed in the ovaries of Eve, he reckons them at two hundred thousand millions. Such was the state of thought when in 1759 K. F. Wolff published some of his studies in the work Theoria generationis, where he maintained, on the strength of experiments and microscopic observations made on the embryos of fowls, that new organisms are not pre-formed, but that they create themselves entirely, starting from nothing—that is, from a microscopic cell, simple as are all primitive cells. He described the simple process by which the real evolution of individuals is brought about: from a single cell, by division, two, and then four and then eight, are formed, and so on. And the cells thus germinated divide themselves into two or three tiny folds of "primitive folioles" from which all the organs are evolved, beginning with the alimentary canal. "This assertion," says Wolff "is not a fanciful theory; it is a description of facts collected by means of the most trustworthy observations."
All the scientists of his day knew and made use of the microscope; all might have taken an egg, that is, the embryo of a fowl, as a subject for observation; they were not indifferent to the problem of individual genesis, but in their case it had merely excited the most complex efforts of the imagination, and had divided them into factions, as adversaries in a battle of thought. Could any one of them attempt to experiment and observe save at the risk of destroying himself together with his adversaries, as Samson destroyed himself with the Philistines? The possibility that there might be some truth in what had been seen and described, and that it might recur, should indeed have induced some one to venture upon a road which, if it proved to be the right one, would have been a glorious path to a future of discoveries and distinctions. But no. A dense fog obscured all minds, and the dazzling truth could not pierce it; thus all progress in embryology was precluded.
Fifty years had passed, and Wolff, poor and persecuted, had died at Petrograd, an exile from his native land, when Pander and Ernest von Baer grappled anew with the theory of "blastodermic foliation." Then the scientific world perceived the truth and accepted the evidence, inaugurating those studies in embryology which shed so much luster on the nineteenth century.
Why was it necessary that fifty years should elapse before men could see what was evident? What had happened in these fifty years? The work of Wolff, dead and forgotten, can have had no influence whatever. The fact was merely that men saw subsequently what it had been previously impossible for them to see. A kind of internal maturity must have come about in them, by virtue of which their spiritual eyes were opened, and they saw. When those eyes were closed, evidence was useless. Fifty years earlier, a direct attack would have spent itself on insuperable obstacles; but with the lapse of time the subject presented itself, and was simply and universally accepted, not only without a struggle, but without any excitement.
This fact might be arguable in relation to the internal maturation of the masses; but it is beyond question in its relation to the individual. When an obvious truth cannot be seen, we must retire, and leave the individual to mature. A struggle "to bring about perception of evidence" would be bitter and exhausting. But when maturity comes, we shall find the seer filled with enthusiasm, and bearing fruit like the vines of the Land of Promise.
When in 1859 Charles Darwin expounded the theory of evolution in his book, "The Origin of Species," he recognized the great influence it had had upon the thought of his day, for he wrote in his note-book: "My theory will lead to a philosophy." His conception of the struggle for life and of the natural selection of characteristics, so widely adopted by the thinkers of his day, popularized the principles of Lamarck as to the casual formation of new characteristics in a species by adaptation to environment; Darwin's conception carried these principles along with it—and almost fused them in its own content. These principles, excluding both creation and its finalities, implicitly denied the immortality of the soul. The effect of such a revolution may be imagined; for many centuries the soul had been the object of life, and when the fundamental faith of existence was shaken, the life of the conscience itself was convulsed. It may be supposed that there was an anxious search for contradictions in the destructive theory, if on no other grounds than that of the instinct to preserve ancient beliefs, which lies deeply rooted in the human race.
But let us take into consideration the two revolutionary principles which so greatly impressed and fired the consciousness of the university students of several generations. One principle was: "There can be no function without an organ." The other principle which created much enthusiasm among studious youths was: "The function creates the organ." What! There is no function without an organ, nor can the function even exist without the organ; and yet, on the other hand, the function without the organ can exist so vigorously as to create? No such glaring and tangible contradiction had ever existed in any theory.
And it cannot be said that Darwinism and the principles of Lamarck were hastily studied and confused in a varied series of philosophical theories, for Darwinism had isolated itself as a victorious idea which drives out all other ideas, as the light of day disperses the darkness of night. And students dwelt upon it, anxious to construct a new morality and a new conscience; therefore these two principles were not studied coldly and languidly. Moreover, they penetrated together into the consciousness and excited enthusiasm each on its own account; on such a triumphant contradiction it was proposed to destroy a world and create another.
The final conclusion of thought, then, was this: "We are mere beasts, there is no substantial difference between the animals and ourselves; we are apes, but our more remote ancestors were earthworms." With what ardor did professors from their chairs analyze the psychology of men, to prove that, try as we may, we can find nothing in ourselves which we do not share with animals, and with what enthusiasm did their pupils applaud them! When professors of psychiatry removed the brains of pigeons and monkeys by vivisection, and, after curing the creatures, exhibited them at international psychological congresses, devoting the most sincere attention to the study of their psychical reactions, observing the attitudes of their bodies, their activity of perception, and similar things—all really believed that an animal without a brain could throw light upon the psychology of man!
When we think that this was the epoch of positivism—that is to say, of those who could not believe without touching, we are profoundly impressed by this reflection: The intelligence, then, is threatened by dangers, like the spirit. It may be obscured, it may contain a contradiction, an "error," without perceiving it, and as a result of a single unnoticed error it may rush into a species of delirium, a mortal aberration. Like the spirit, then, it has its way of salvation, and it needs to be sustained lest it should perish. The support it requires is not that of the senses. Like the spirit, it needs a continual purification, which, like the fish of Tobias, heals the eyes of their blindness. That "self-care" which the hygiene of to-day prescribes for the body, and which makes us spend so much time even on cleaning and polishing our nails, should be extended to the inner man, that this may preserve its health and its integrity.
This should be the object of "the education of the intelligence." To educate the intelligence is to save it from its peculiar perils of disease and death; it is to "purge it of its offenses." We shall not educate the intelligence if we weary it by making it learn things. This is patent in these days of ours, when the victims of nervous disorders and lunacy abound, and when, even among those who are considered healthy, the material consequences of madness may explode, threatening the whole of humanity with ruin.
Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire "to make him learn things," but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called the intelligence. If to this end we must consecrate ourselves as did the vestals of old, it will be a work worthy of so great a result.