Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

It is curious how the philosophy of the Bible is always well in advance of our latest thought. “He grew in wisdom and in stature,” we are told. Now what is wisdom—philosophy? Is it not the recognition of relations? First, we have to understand relations of time and space and matter, the natural philosophy which made up so much of the wisdom of Solomon; then, by slow degrees, and more and more, we learn that moral philosophy which determines our relations of love and justice and duty to each other: later, perhaps, we investigate the profound and puzzling subject of the inter-relations of our own most composite being,—mental philosophy. And in all these and beyond all these we apprehend slowly and feebly the highest relation of all, the relation to God, which we call religion. In this science of the relations of things consists what we call wisdom, and wisdom is not born in any man,—apparently not even in the Son of man Himself. He grew in wisdom, in the sweet gradual apprehension of all the relations of life: but the power of apprehending, the strong, subtle, discerning spirit, whose function it is to grasp and understand, appropriate and use, all the relations which bind all things to all other things—this was not given to Him by measure; nor, we may reverently believe, is it so given to us.

That there are differences in the measures of men, in their intellectual and moral stature, is evident enough; but it is well that we should realise the nature of these differences, that they are differences in kind and not in degree; depending upon what we glibly call the laws of heredity, which bring it to pass that man in his various aspects shall make up that conceivably perfect whole possible to mankind. This is a quite different thing from the notion of a small and feeble measure of heart and intellect in the child, to grow by degrees into the robust and noble spiritual development which, according to the psychical evolutionist, should distinguish the adult human being.

These are quite practical and simple considerations for every one entrusted with the bringing up of a child, and are not to be set aside as abstract principles, the discussion of which should serve little purpose beyond that of sharpening the wits of the schoolmen. As a matter of fact, we do not realise children, we under-estimate them; in the divine words, we “despise” them, with the best intentions in the world, because we confound the immaturity of their frames, and their absolute ignorance as to the relations of things, with spiritual impotence: whereas the fact probably is, that never is intellectual power so keen, the moral sense so strong, spiritual perception so piercing, as in those days of childhood which we regard with a supercilious, if kindly, smile. A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present—present now at this very moment—not to be educed after years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator: but indeed it is a greater thing to direct and use this wealth of spiritual power than to develop the so-called faculties of the child. It cannot be too strongly urged that our education of children will depend, nolens volens, upon the conception we form of them. If we regard them as instruments fit and capable for the carrying out of the Divine purpose in the progress of the world, we shall endeavour to discern the signs of the times, perceive in what directions we are being led, and prepare the children to carry forward the work of the world, by giving them vitalising ideas concerning, at any rate, some departments of that work.

Having settled it with ourselves that we and the children alike live for the advancement of the race, that our work is immediately with them, and, through them, mediately for all, and that they are perfectly fitted to receive those ideas which are for the inspiration of life, we must next settle it with ourselves in what directions we shall set up spiritual activities in the children.

We have sought to establish our whence in the potency of the child, we will look for our whither in the living thought of the day, which probably indicates the directions in which the race is making progress. We find that all men everywhere are keenly interested in science, that the world waits and watches for great discoveries; we, too, wait and watch, believing that, as Coleridge said long ago, great ideas of Nature are imparted to minds already prepared to receive them by a higher Power than Nature herself.

At a late meeting of the British Association, the President lamented that the progress of science was greatly hindered by the fact that we no longer have field naturalists—close observers of Nature as she is. A literary journal made a lamentable remark thereupon. It is all written in books, said this journal, so we have no longer any need to go to Nature herself. Now the knowledge of Nature which we get out of books is not real knowledge; the use of books is, to help the young student to verify facts he has already seen for himself. We, of the P.N.E.U., are before all things, Nature-lovers; we conceive that intimate acquaintance with every natural object within his reach is the first, and possibly, the best part of a child’s education. For himself, all his life long, he will be soothed by—

“The breathing balm,

The silence and the calm,

Of mute insensate things.”

And for science, he is in a position to do just the work which is most needed; he will be a close loving observer of Nature at first hand, storing facts, and free from all impatient greed for inferences.