Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

We have brought together these paragraphs taken from Allston's lectures on Art, for the consideration of practical kindergartners, all the more confidently, because they were not written as theory of education, but were parts of a practical inquiry after the standard of judgment for pictorial and plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He sought to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate science,—for science must always be inadequate, as Newton so forcibly expressed, when he defined it "gathering a few pebbles on the shores of the infinite ocean of truth." The object of the lecturer was what the kindergartner's first object should be,—to awaken the self-respect of the eternal soul within us all, making the life of our individuality—our personality—which, in its mysterious depth and independent pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the image of the Divine Personality, whose spoken word is the material universe, but clothed in flesh becomes man. It is no part of the kindergartner's duty to give—she can only awaken—the feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and conscience. She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that the child shall do, thereby assisting him to form his own understanding so that his bodily organization may be properly developed; to let in upon his soul nature in its beauteous forms and order, and his fellow-creatures, in their legitimate claims upon him. Then he shall come forth from the sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive consciousness of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this marrying of finite thought to infinite love, is Frœbel's Education; and cannot be accomplished, unless the kindergartner clearly sees what God has done for the child absolutely, and what for an ineffable purpose,—most gracious to the human race,—He has left to be done by human providence, whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some other fellow-creature.

It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a child is regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon, or as a living power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be educated by truth.

UNDERSTANDING.

We have spoken of the evidences of the æsthetic being found in the mysterious depths of human personality, pre-existent to the individual understanding (which is a growth in time); and that, without there were this æsthetic being, underlying all individual consciousness, there would be no standard of human virtue or art.

This æsthetic person has also (previous to the development of the understanding, which makes the synthesis of himself and nature) an impulsive force, instinct with the desire to change his conditions. Man does not appear in the world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and suffering; but as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an effect either orderly or disorderly.

The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a measure personal force. All material forces are uniform and necessary and correlative in their action, which is impressed upon them from without themselves. Man alone is self-active, and may clash with the other forces to his own pain, and he will often do so, until by knowledge of them he can harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumentality to satisfy his æsthetic nature. We call this self-activity of man, which is in such vital union with his sensibility, the human will, and it makes the personal life of every one to learn this self-activity of his, in its differences from and relations to all other forces, as he can only do perfectly by keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social relation with other æsthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds himself in these relations with fellow-beings who have more or less of the knowledge he has not; and some of them have all the responsibility of his actions until he has begun to know himself in discrimination from the material universe and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a fulcrum for his own effective action among them. The one central unity whose æsthetic being and will are inclusive of himself and fellow-beings as subject, on the one hand, and of the material universe as object, on the other, is God.

The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain because he is finite and not omnipotent. God is the omnipotent maker of the material universe, but man is not absolutely made; he is a cause, that is, created to make, if we may credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of creation is the most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be surpassed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a correspondent poem, with God for its theme instead of man and nature.

It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance at least, the fully developed man, that this hymn of the Creator was possible. God's word (revelation of himself) was in the world, embodied in the things made from the beginning; but until it was embodied in a man, free to will, it was truth in the form of law only (regulative), not yet in the completer form of love (creative). In short, before St. John could sing that divine song, he must have seen God in a man, full of grace and truth, dwelling among men as a fellow-man, and overflowing with a power at once sympathetic and causal.

God created man, male and female (that is, giving and receiving equally), to be keepers of each other, and to educate each other. They may tempt and fail each other by presumption as Eve, and want of self-respect as Adam, are represented to have done, at the beginning; or may save and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary historically did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspiring all who know him, to educate and redeem each other.

In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it is indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which is a primeval fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering and enjoyment. The educator ought to embody God in a measure, and treat the will of the child that is to be educated, on the same grand system of respecting individual freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition, awaken the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man-blessing power.