The educator believes often that he spares the child future suffering when he "opposes his onesidedness," as it is called. He does not reflect that in the effort to force the child in a direction contrary to that in which his personality evinces itself, he merely succeeds in diminishing his nature; yes, often merely in retaining the weakness in the quality, not the corresponding strength!
But ordinarily it is indeed no such principle, but only the old thoughtlessly maintained ideal of self-renunciation which is decisive. We repress the child's joy of discovery and check the spirit of enterprise; wound his extremely sensitive sense of beauty; exercise force over his most personal possessions, his tokens of tenderness; combat his aversions and quench his enthusiasm. Amid such attacks upon their individual being, their feelings and their inclinations most children, but especially girls, grow up. It is therefore not surprising that when grown they seldom look back upon their childhood as a happy time.
An intense feeling of life, a sense of plenitude, entirety, of the complete development of the powers of the potentialities—this constitutes happiness. Children have more possibilities of happiness than adults, for they can experience this feeling of joy of life more undividedly and immediately. They should utilize these possibilities of happiness while the parents have partial power over their life. Soon enough must they on their own initiative attempt, accomplish, bleed; and herein no one of all the influences of education has even approximately the significance of this: that the individual be not overtrained, that he have still strength enough to live. That means: to suffer his own sorrow, to enjoy his own happiness, to perform his own work, to think his own thoughts, to be able to devote himself absolutely and entirely—the sole condition of being able to work, to love and to die.
It is a deep psychological truth that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the children. For no one attains the highest that life offers in any other way than by simplicity, unworldliness and the power of devoting his whole being without reserve to his object. This is the strength of the child nature. If a mother by education has preserved this holy strength and developed it to a conscious power, then she has given to mankind not only a new being but a new personality.
But the education in the family, just as in the school, is tending in the opposite direction. The destruction of the personality is therefore the great evil of the time.
Yet man is fortunately a vigorous organism. And those, whose personality has been bowed or repressed by education, could raise themselves again and create freedom for their development if they were aware of the value of this freedom.
Few beings and so likewise few women can be exceptional. But if only a few are destined for a great personality, yet nevertheless most can, in spite of the errors of education, develop a certain degree of personality, if they are deeply, earnestly concerned in it.
For everything is interrelated. No one lives unpunished by a second hand. We cannot advance intellectually by borrowing, without becoming also morally less scrupulous. We are today unjust to a book, a picture, a drama, because we pronounce judgment upon it according to the words of others, or because we do not dare to show the pleasure it gives us, in case the critic has not granted us permission to be pleased, or because we feign indignation we do not feel, but which others require of us in the name of taste or morality. Tomorrow, in the same way, we shall be unjust or dishonest to man, or to our own feeling—an injustice or a dishonesty which can have influence over the destiny of a whole life.
The sum of spiritual riches, of spiritual utilities, is thereby diminished if we do not cede to the whole what is most essentially ours. That which is really our own may be great or small, rich or insignificant—if we ourselves have felt or thought it, it is more significant to others than that which we merely repeat, even if our authority be the highest. And in those cases where we must rely upon authorities, we still can put a certain personality into our choice and honesty in acknowledging our indebtedness, by confessing that we have borrowed our judgment we can put honesty and originality into this dependence.