What appeared to be his spying proclivities were, in fact, a manifestation of the problem that dominated his childish conscience: the problem of right and wrong. The limited experience of his own life did not suffice him; he wanted to benefit by the experience of all the others in order to learn what things were right and what were wrong; almost as if the one feeling that absorbed him was the desire to do right and avoid wrong, and as if this were his sole aspiration. The case of this child recalls a popular superstition expressed in such terms as "too good to live." The child A seemed destined for the fate thus suggested. The needs of the body did not greatly concern him, and he seemed equally indifferent to those of the mind; goodness was the mainspring of his being. If society does not note such dispositions, and assume the special protection of such frail lives, children of this type go forward to premature death like angels gazing heavenwards.
These two accounts, due to Signorina Maccheroni's observation, correct a superficial judgment which, in an ordinary school, would have become a permanent record of character: the one child would have been branded as violent, the other as a spy.
If we call that science which led to the translation of these words into hero and angel, and touched so many hearts in the vicinity of these two children, when they had been interpreted by their wonderful instructress, we shall be able to assert that "the judgment of love is the judgment of knowledge." The mercy of Christ in judging is here illustrated.
"Psychical action," then, starts from a principle which may be translated thus: "that the child lives." All the rest comes as a consequence.
This action of fundamental life manifests itself as a polarization of the internal personality: almost at a point of crystallization, around which, provided there be homogeneous material and an undisturbed environment, the definitive form composes itself.
This initial action is a task repeated with a special intensity of attention.
In my "biographical chart," therefore, I do not give a long formula of analytical studies, but I give a "guide to psychological observations," founded upon the synthetical conception which I have sought to illustrate. Those who have not been initiated into this method of observation will gain no light from such a guide, which lies entirely outside the conceptions of psychological study now obtaining in connection with the observation of pupils. But those who have been initiated will understand it without the aid of illustration.
Our teachers have also a terminology by means of which they understand each other, without having recourse to the ordinary expressions, which do not convey an exact idea of the action they see in process of development. Thus they never say: The child is developing, or progressing, the child is good or naughty, etc. The only phraseology they use is: The child is becoming disciplined or is not becoming disciplined. It is internal order that they await; and on this principle of being or not being, all or nothing depends.
This evokes a much deeper conception than that of "growth." To say that a living creature grows is to make a very superficial statement, seeing that he grows indeed, but in virtue of the fact that, within, an orderly and regular disposition of substances is in progress.