Here we get such a genesis of an idea as fits in curiously with what we know of the history of great inventions and discoveries “presented to chosen minds by a higher Power than Nature herself.” It corresponds too, not only with the ideas that rule our own lives, but with the origin of practical ideas which is unfolded to us by the prophet Isaiah:—
“Doth the ploughman plough continually to ... open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches and scatter the cummin and put the wheat in rows ... for his God doth instruct him aright and doth teach him.... Bread corn is ground for he will not ever be threshing it.... This also cometh from the Lord of Hosts which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.”[18]
Let us hear Coleridge further on the subject of those ideas which may invest us as an atmosphere rather than strike as a weapon:—
“The idea may exist in a clear and definite form as that of a circle in that of the mind of a geometrician or it may be a mere instinct, a vague appetency towards something ... like the impulse which fills a young poet’s eyes with tears.”
These indefinite ideas which express themselves in an ‘appetency’ towards something and which should draw a child towards things honest, lovely and of good report, are not to be offered of set purpose or at set times: they are held in that thought-atmosphere which surrounds him, breathed as his breath of life.
It is distressing to think that our poor words and ways should be thus inspired by children; but to recognise the fact will make us careful not to admit sordid or unworthy thoughts and motives into our dealings with them.
Coleridge treats in more detail those definite ideas which are not inhaled as air but are conveyed as meat to the mind:—
“From the first or initiative idea, as from a seed, successive ideas germinate.” “Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery of the external world, are like light and air and moisture to the seed of the mind which would else rot and perish.” “The paths in which we may pursue a methodical course are manifold and at the head of each stands its peculiar and guiding idea. Those ideas are as regularly subordinate in dignity as the paths to which they point are various and eccentric in direction. The world has suffered much in modern times from a subversive and necessary natural order of science ... from summoning reason and faith to the bar of that limited physical experience to which by the true laws of method they owe no obedience. Progress follows the path of the idea from which it sets out requiring however a constant wakefulness of mind to keep it within the due limits of its course. Hence the orbits of thought, so to speak, must differ from among themselves as the initiative ideas differ.” (Method, S. T. C.).
Is it not a fact that the new light which biology is throwing upon the laws of mind is bringing us back to the Platonic doctrine that “An idea is a distinguishable power, self-affirmed and seen in unity with the Eternal Essence”?
I have ventured to repeat from an earlier volume[19] this slight exposition of Coleridge’s teaching, because his doctrine corresponds with common experience and should reverse our ordinary educational practice. The whole subject is profound, but as practical as it is profound. We must disabuse our minds of the theory that the functions of education are in the main gymnastic, a continual drawing out without a corresponding act of putting in. The modern emphasis upon ‘self-expression’ has given new currency to this idea; we who know how little there is in us that we have not received, that the most we can do is to give an original twist, a new application, to an idea that has been passed on to us; who recognise, humbly enough, that we are but torch-bearers, passing on our light to the next as we have received it from the last, even we invite children to ‘express themselves’ about a tank, a Norman castle, the Man in the Moon, not recognising that the quaint things children say on unfamiliar subjects are no more than a patchwork of notions picked up here and there. One is not sure that so-called original composition is wholesome for children, because their consciences are alert and they are quite aware of their borrowings; it may be better that they should read on a theme before they write upon it, using then as much latitude as they like.