Practical Education, Volume II

by Maria Edgeworth; Richard Lovell Edgeworth

Locke tells us of a young man, who, having been accustomed to see an old trunk in the room with him when he learned to dance, associated his dancing exertions so strongly with the sight of this trunk, that he could not succeed by any voluntary efforts in its absence. We have, in our remarks upon attention,[82] pointed out the great inconveniences to which those are exposed who acquire associated habits of intellectual exertion; who cannot speak, or write, or think, without certain habitual aids to their memory or imagination. We must further observe, that incessant vigilance is necessary in the moral education of children disposed to form strong associations; they are liable to sudden and absurd dislikes or predilections, with respect to persons, as well as things; they are subject to caprice in their affections and temper, and liable to a variety of mental infirmities, which, in different degrees, we call passion or madness. Locke tells us, that he knew a man who, after having been restored to health by a painful operation, had so strongly associated the idea and figure of the operator with the agony he had endured, that though he acknowledged the obligation, and felt gratitude towards this friend who had saved him, he never afterwards could bear to see his benefactor. There are some people who associate so readily and incorrigibly the idea of any pain or insult they have received from another, with his person and character, that they can never afterwards forget or forgive. They are hence disposed to all the intemperance of hatred and revenge; to the chronic malice of a Jago, or the acute pangs of an Achilles. Homer, in his speech of Achilles to Agamemnon's mediating ambassadors, has drawn a strong and natural picture of the progress of anger. It is worth studying as a lesson in metaphysics. Whenever association suggests to the mind of Achilles the injury he has received, he loses his reason, and the orator works himself up from argument to declamation, and from declamation to desperate resolution, through a close linked connection of ideas and sensations.

The insanities of ambition, avarice, and vanity, originate in early mistaken associations. A feather, or a crown, or an alderman's chain, or a cardinal's hat, or a purse of yellow counters, are unluckily associated in the minds of some men with the idea of happiness, and, without staying to deliberate, these unfortunate persons hunt through life the phantasms of a disordered imagination. Whilst we pity, we are amused by the blindness and blunders of those whose mistakes can affect no one's felicity but their own; but any delusions which prompt their victims to actions inimical to their fellow-creatures, are the objects not unusually of pity, but of indignation, of private aversion and public punishment. We smile at the avaricious insanity of the miser, who dresses himself in the cast-off Wig of a beggar, and pulls a crushed pancake from his pocket for his own and for his friend's dinner.[83] We smile at the insane vanity of the pauper, who dressed himself in a many-coloured paper star, assumed the title of Duke of Baubleshire, and as such required homage from every passenger.[84] But are we inclined to smile at the outrageous vanity of the man who styled himself the son of Jupiter, and who murdered his best friend for refusing him divine honours? Are we disposed to pity the slave-merchant, who, urged by the maniacal desire for gold, hears unmoved the groans of his fellow-creatures, the execrations of mankind, and that "small still voice," which haunts those who are stained with blood.

The moral insanities which strike us with horror, compassion, or ridicule, however they may differ in their effects, have frequently one common origin; an early false association of ideas. Persons who mistake in measuring their own feelings, or who neglect to compare their ideas, and to balance contending wishes, scarcely merit the name of rational creatures. The man, who does not deliberate, is lost.

We have endeavoured, though well aware of the difficulty of the subject, to point out some of the precautions that should be used in governing the imagination of young people of different dispositions. We should add, that in all cases the pupils attention to his own mind will be of more consequence, than the utmost vigilance of the most able preceptor; the sooner he is made acquainted with his own character, and the sooner he can be excited to govern himself by reason, or to attempt the cure of his own defects, the better.

There is one habit of the imagination, to which we have not yet adverted, the habit of reverie. In reverie we are so intent upon a particular train of ideas, that we are unconscious of all external objects, and we exert but little voluntary power. It is true that some persons in castle-building both reason and invent, and therefore must exert some degree of volition; even in the wildest reverie, there may be traced some species of consistency, some connection amongst the ideas; but this is simply the result of the association of ideas. Inventive castle-builders are rather nearer the state of insanity than of reverie; they reason well upon false principles; their airy fabrics are often both in good taste and in good proportion; nothing is wanting to them but a foundation. On the contrary, nothing can be more silly than the reveries of silly people; they are not only defective in consistency, but they want all the unities; they are not extravagant, but they are stupid; they consist usually of a listless reiteration of uninteresting ideas; the whole pleasure enjoyed by those addicted to them consists in the facility of repetition.

It is a mistaken notion, that only people of ardent imaginations are disposed to reverie; the most indolent and stupid persons waste their existence in this indulgence; they do not act always in consequence of their dreams, therefore we do not detect their folly. Young people of active minds, when they have not sufficient occupation, necessarily indulge in reverie; and, by degrees, this wild exercise of their invention and imagination becomes so delightful to them, that they prefer it to all sober employments.

Mr. Williams, in his Lectures upon Education, gives an account of a boy singularly addicted to reverie. The desire of invisibility had seized his mind, and for several years he had indulged his fancy with imagining all the pleasures that he should command, and all the feats that he could perform, if he were in possession of Gyges's ring. The reader should, however, be informed, that this castle-builder was not a youth of strict veracity; his confession upon this occasion, as upon others, might not have been sincere. We only state the story from Mr. Williams.

To prevent children from acquiring a taste for reverie, let them have various occupations both of mind and body. Let us not direct their imagination to extraordinary future pleasures, but let us suffer them to enjoy the present. Anticipation is a species of reverie; and children, who have promises of future pleasures frequently made to them, live in a continual state of anticipation.

To cure the habit of reverie when it has once been formed, we must take different methods with different tempers. With those who indulge in the stupid reverie, we should employ strong excitations, and present to the senses a rapid succession of objects, which will completely engage without fatiguing them. This mode must not be followed with children of different dispositions, else we should increase, instead of curing, the disease. The most likely method to break this habit in children of great quickness or sensibility, is to set them to some employment which is wholly new to them, and which will consequently exercise and exhaust all their faculties, so that they shall have no life left for castle-building. Monotonous occupations, such as copying, drawing, or writing, playing on the harpsichord, &c. are not, if habit has made them easy to the pupil, fit for our purpose. We may all perceive, that in such occupations, the powers of the mind are left unexercised. We can frequently read aloud with tolerable emphasis for a considerable time together, and at the same time think upon some subject foreign to the book we hold in our hands.

The most difficult exercises of the mind, such as invention, or strict reasoning, are those alone which are sufficient to subjugate and chain down the imagination of some active spirits. To such laborious exercises they should be excited by the encouraging voice of praise and affection. Imaginative children will be more disposed to invent than to reason, but they cannot perfect any invention without reasoning; there will, therefore, be a mixture of what they like and dislike in the exercise of invention, and the habit of reasoning will, perhaps, gradually become agreeable to them, if it be thus dexterously united with the pleasures of the imagination.