LECTURE II.
THE NURSERY.
It is my object to inspire, if I can, an enthusiasm for educating children strictly on Frœbel's method, and no other; and I wish to justify myself by giving reasons for this; for I know that, at first sight, Americans start back from putting faith in any leader; immediately exclaiming, that they must be free to follow the light of their own minds.
This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees the danger of yielding to any individual authority more than I do; but it is certain that nothing may make us so narrow, as a bigoted adherence to the rule of following the light of our own mind condignly. The light of our own individual mind may be darkness; it must, in any case, be that of a farthing candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The question is, do we distinguish between that greater light and our own idiosyncrasy, with a becoming and discriminating humility? I once heard a lady, whose name was Gurley, say to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total depravity of human nature from the experience of her own heart." Ah! but that is not quite fair, he replied, "for how do you know what is human nature and what is Gurleyism?" Here is tersely suggested the danger of the individualistic philosophy, which has developed itself into a new kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denunciatory in its animus than any other; and which shuts up its votaries in a dungeon from the light of Universal experience. I acknowledge the legitimacy of the philosophy of individualism, as a protest against the glittering generality which theological philosophy had become, at the time when it arose; and as affirmation that God makes every man separately an eye, and if he would see into the Infinite Over-soul, he must look with it out of his own window. But this is only the way to begin to search for truth. If he is not self-intoxicated, every man soon learns that his window does not command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a window to him, but to every other man; that we are all free to look out of each others' windows, some being higher up in the tower of the common humanity than our own, commanding wider views; in fine that it is with all the sons of man that "wisdom dwells," and they must inter-communicate with mutual reverence if they would know her well. Frœbel had not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will not be wise if you do not look out of Frœbel's window.
The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of Frœbel's mind from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the common motherly instinct, purified of individual passion and caprice, and, understanding itself as the presence of the Living God overshadowing her, is the social atmosphere necessary to be breathed by every child who is to grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Frœbel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively, as it were, by lacking it in his own childish experience; and he verified it positively afterwards, by studying the method of unsophisticated mothers, at that earliest period of their children's lives, when, in order to keep them alive merely, the nurse must take the rule of her nursing from the needs which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's own expression of want and content—its tears and smiles.
Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art, which is preliminary to that of the Kindergarten.
By the primal miracle (i.e., wonder working) of nature, the mother finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an immeasurable susceptibility of suffering, and an immeasurable desire of enjoyment, and an equally immeasurable force intent on compassing this desire, already in activity, but with no knowledge at all of the material conditions in which he is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited in the exercise of this immense nature.
As I have said before, every form of animal existence but the human, is endowed with some absolute knowledge, enabling it to fulfil its limited sphere of relationship as unerringly as the magnetized needle turns to the pole, and, even with more or less of enjoyment; yet with no forethought. But the knowledge that is to guide the blind will of the human being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily life, exists substantially outside of its own individuality in the mother, or whoever supplies the mother's place.