That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the "Ann Sisters" building, taught me as no mere words ever could have done, that it was the most acceptable service to God to educate all his children to know him and his works. That first idea of human duty I have never outgrown, but still believe universal education is the true culture of the American people, the reasonable service they owe to him who called them out of the Old World to be a nation of individuals. There was nothing fatal, therefore, in that first false notion of God (which I received for a time), though it was for a time more of an evil to me than it would have been to a child less subjective, or of more lively perception of things without. Liveliness of perception brings so many things before the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it undoubtedly prevents the stereotyping of many a single impression and fancy that does injustice to spiritual truths; and false impressions, unless strongly associated with terror or some other morbid sensibility, do not take hold of a child so strongly as the images that are consistent with the eternal laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human face divine with which I had instantaneously clothed my intuition of God, and which, notwithstanding its temporary eclipse, has haunted me all my life.
It is very encouraging to the educator to know that the innocent soul of childhood has so much more affinity with truth than with falsehood, because the best and most careful educator cannot sequestrate children entirely from false impressions. But what finds no echo in the spirit passes off, unless the mind is shocked into passivity by fear or pain. When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority to passive impressions, and makes use of them as materials for imaginative production. It is, therefore, desirable to keep children employed in gentle activity which has successful results, and happy in the midst of attractive natural surroundings, by which God is working with us in the same purpose of educating the child, allowing us to be his partners, as it were, in this work, because it educates us. It is not uncommon to hear persons say that they would like to begin life all over again with the knowledge they have gained from their life-experience. This we can all do if we will in imagination really live with our children, as Frœbel says, whose motto explains what Christ meant when he bids us to be converted and become little children.
LECTURE VI.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.
Part First.
I said in my last lecture that had I possessed the power to talk in Laura Bridgeman's hand, I should have begged Dr. Howe to let me have some conversation with her after she said that she "thought about God all times"; not that I felt that I could teach her, but that I might learn what God had taught her concerning Himself. It was a wonderful chance for a most important psychological observation of the innocent mind of childhood, and would have afforded, doubtless, a luminous illustration of the truth that the human soul is also a divine personality justifying the method initiated by Frœbel of conversing with the children in the Socratic manner.
But already in my lifetime I had had an opportunity for psychological observation, made under circumstances perhaps still more favorable for getting evidence of the importance of a very early recognition of the Heavenly Father's name in the formation in a healthy manner of the human understanding and the development of the reason, verifying the declaration which Frœbel has made the corner-stone of his system; namely, that though a child is the extreme opposite of God, contrasting as effect to cause, as absolute want to infinite supply, all these terms are connected—conciliated—into unity, by Love and Thought, which must recognize each other, and whose loss of equal companionship is a
"Grief, past all balsam and relief,"
as Mr. Emerson has sung.