Loti adds: “The phrases ‘out in the Colonies’ and ‘a huge melon’ were enough to plunge me suddenly into a dream. As by an apparition, I beheld tropical trees, forests alive with marvellous birds. Oh! the simple magic of the words 'the Colonies'! In my childhood they stood for a multitude of distant sun-scorched countries, with their palm-trees, their enormous flowers, their black natives, their wild beasts, their endless possibilities of adventure.”
I quote this in full because it shows so clearly the magic force of words to evoke pictures, without any material representation. It is just the opposite effect of the pictures presented to the bodily eye without the splendid educational opportunity for the child to form his own mental image.
I am more and more convinced that the rare power of visualization is accounted for by the lack of mental practice afforded along these lines.
The third argument used by the teachers in favour of the dramatisation of the stories is that it is a means of discovering how much the child has really learnt from the story. Now this argument makes absolutely no appeal to me.
My experience, in the first place, has taught me that a child very seldom gives out any account of a deep impression made upon him: it is too sacred and personal. But he very soon learns to know what is expected of him, and he keeps a set of stock sentences which he has found out are acceptable to the teacher. How can we possibly gauge the deep effects of a story in this way, or how can a child, by acting out a story, describe the subtle elements which you have tried to introduce? You might as well try to show with a pint measure how the sun and rain have affected a plant, instead of rejoicing in the beauty of the sure, if slow, growth.
Then, again, why are we in such a hurry to find out what effects have been produced by our stories? Does it matter whether we know to-day or to-morrow how much a child has understood? For my part, so sure do I feel of the effect that I am willing to wait indefinitely. Only I must make sure that the first presentation is truly dramatic and artistic.
The teachers of general subjects have a much easier and more simple task. Those who teach science, mathematics, even, to a certain extent, history and literature, are able to gauge with a fair amount of accuracy, by means of examination, what their pupils have learnt. The teaching carried on by means of stories can never be gauged in the same manner. We must be content, though we have nothing to place in our “shop window,” content to know of the possessions behind, and make up our mind that we can show the education authorities little or no results from our teaching, but that the real fruit will be seen by the next generation; and we can take courage, for, if our story be “a thing of beauty,” it will never “pass into nothingness.”
Carlyle has said:[47]
“Of this thing be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and Heart. Wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding, what will grow there.”