In breathless sentences, Bruno’s heart interest worded itself. Then, as the others settled themselves for the day’s work, Bruno began his day of service. He was the Loving One, the Helping One, the Comforting One of the Via Giusti Children’s House. Was any child left without a glass of water at the luncheon hour, Bruno fetched it. Did the little girl waitress for the day forget to fill a soup plate from her tureen, Bruno reminded her. If the three-year-old started home with his cloak unbuttoned, Bruno, feeling in his tender little heart the chill wind of the Roman hills, buttoned the cloak for the baby. If a toddler tumbled down, Bruno picked it up and examined it for bumps, and started it safely on its way again. He fetched and carried, watched for chances to help, to champion the weak, to wipe away anybody’s tears with the hem of his apron.
The seat he most often chose was under a cast of the Madonna. Sometimes he sat quiet for long spaces, looking at it. “Bruno calls the Madonna his madre,” whispered Piccola one day.
“Who is that big, homely child?” asked a visitor, pointing to Bruno putting fresh water in a bowl of roses that stood under the cast. “Isn’t he older than the other children?”
“Older—yes, in spirit,” answered the far-seeing directress. “He is our little Christ-child.”
So he is our little Christ-child. Wherever there is a child in a home, Dr. Montessori tells us, there Christ is. She discovers for us a new sense, the “conscience sense,” only waiting for an opportunity to exercise itself and, in the exercising, unfold and bloom and ripen into the fruits of the spirit. If being an orphan and hungry and beaten and knowing vile things couldn’t hurt the soul of Bruno, think of the possibility of Christ in your baby.
Children grow, mentally, through the right exercise of the senses. To see and to be able to distinguish between beautiful colors and beautiful forms; to discriminate between sounds that are discordant and sounds that are harmonious; to know rough things and smooth things, round things and square things, velvet things and linen things, by touching them with the finger tips, this we know is a starting point on the road of the three R’s of everyday education. Dr. Montessori guides us a lap farther in the new education. She sees, born with every child, eyes of the spirit and slender, groping fingers of the soul that look and reach for the good. To help a child to use his spirit eyes and his soul fingers means to give him a chance to exercise his conscience. It is a new sort of sense-training that means his finding the three R’s of the life of the spirit: faith, hope, and charity.
How shall we help a child to exercise and train his conscience sense?
Dr. Montessori tells us that if we but watch a little child’s free, spontaneous use of his soul fingers, his daily loves and hopes and faith, these will shine for us as a Bethlehem star-path leading us to the manger-throne of a King-in-the-making. As we are turning a child’s tendency to handle into mind-training, we will turn his manifestations of inner sensibility into morality.
It is quite ineffectual to say to a child:
“You must love your neighbor.”