"That his school was a marked benefit to every child with whom he came into communication...."
"What I witnessed in his school room threw for me a new light into the profoundest mysteries that have been consecrated by the Christian symbols; and the study of childhood[Pg 266] made there I would not exchange for anything else I have experienced in life."
The Boston school was made more closely conformable to the spiritual idea than any previous ones. The intellectual tone of the society he frequented, the sympathy of his transcendental friends, the standing of his pupils, the expectation of exacting lookers on, encouraged the philosopher to give free rein to his theory. The principle of vicarious punishment—the innocent bearing pain for the guilty—the master for the pupil—was adopted as likely to enlist the sentiment of honor and noble shame in the cause of good behavior. A portion of the time was set apart for direct address by way of question and answer, to the higher faculties of the scholars. Mr. Alcott gave a series of "Conversations on the Gospels," with most interesting and surprising results. These too were reported, and are very suggestive and astonishing reading.
But even in Boston, the teacher's faith in the soul found an unresponsive public. The "Conversations on the Gospels" were furiously attacked in the newspapers. The conservative spirit was aroused; the sectarian feeling was shocked; and the school, which began with thirty pupils, and rose to forty, fell away to ten; the receipts, which in the first year were $1,794, in the fourth (1837), were but $549, and at last only $343. In April, 1839, the furniture, library and apparatus of the school were sold to pay debts. The culture, refinement, liberality, philosophic aspiration of Boston, led by such men as James Freeman Clarke, Frederick H. Hedge, Chandler Robbins, George Russell, and by such women as Margaret Fuller, Miss Peabody, Miss Martineau, and the mothers of boys who have since done credit to their names, were not sufficient to protect the institution from failure, or the teacher from insult and obloquy. Prejudice, and prejudice alone, defeated the scheme.
But the idea and the apostle survived. Miss Harriet Martineau, who knew Mr. Alcott well in 1837, spoke of him on her return home to James Pierrepont Greaves, an ardent English disciple of Pestalozzi. Mr. Greaves gave the name "Alcott House," to a school near London, which he had founded on the Pestalozzian method; he even meditated a visit to America, for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the New England sage, and would have done so but for illness, which terminated in death. A long letter from him to Mr. Alcott, was printed in the "Dial" of April, 1843, a portion whereof it is interesting to read, because it throws light on the cardinal ideas of this school of thinkers. Mr. Alcott's reply to the letter is not before us, but it was probably, in the main, sympathetic. The letter is dated London, 16th December, 1837:
Dear Sir,—Believing the Spirit has so far established its nature in you, as to make you willing to co-operate with itself in Love operations, I am induced, without apology, to address you as a friend and companion in the hidden path of Love's most powerful revelations. "The Record of a School" having fallen into my hands, through Miss Harriet Martineau, I have perused it with deep interest; and the object of my present address to you[Pg 268] (occasioned by this work) is to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with one, in our Sister Land, who is so divinely and universally developed. Permit me, therefore, dear sir, in simple affection, to put a few questions to you, which, if answered, will give me possession of that information respecting you and your work, which I think will be useful to present and to future generations of men. Also a mutual service may be rendered to ourselves, by assisting to evolve our own being more completely, thereby making us more efficient instruments for Love's use, in carrying forward the work which it has begun within us. The Unity himself must have his divine purpose to accomplish in and by us, or he would not have prepared us as far as he has. I am, therefore, willing to withhold nothing, but to receive and transmit all he is pleased to make me be, and thus, at length, to become an harmonious being. This he can readily work in the accomplishment of his primitive purposes. Should you think that a personal intercourse of a few weeks would facilitate the universal work, I would willingly undertake the voyage to America for that purpose. There is so decided and general a similarity in the sentiments and natures addressed in the account of your teaching, that a contact of spirits so alike developed would, no doubt, prove productive of still further development. Your school appears to work deeper than any we have in England, and its inner essential character interests me. If an American bookseller will send over any of your books to his correspondents here, I shall be happy to receive and pay for them.
In the year 1817 some strong interior visitations came over me, which withdrew me from the world in a considerable degree, and I was enabled to yield myself up to Love's own manner of acting, regardless of all consequences. Soon after this time, I met with an account of the Spirit's work in and by the late venerable Pestalozzi, which so interested me that I proceeded at once to visit him in Switzerland, and remained with him in holy fellowship four[Pg 269] years. After that I was working with considerable success amongst the various students in that country, when the prejudices of the self-made wise and powerful men became jealous of my influence, and I was advised to return to England, which I did; and have been working in various ways of usefulness ever since, from the deep centre to the circumference; and am now engaged in writing my conscientious experiences as well as I can represent them in words, and in teaching all such as come within my sphere of action. Receptive beings, however, have as yet been but limited, and those who permanently retain, have been still less; yet, at present, there appears a greater degree of awakening to the central love-sensibility than before. I see many more symptoms of the harvest-time approaching in this country. There is, at present, no obvious appearance of the Love-seed beginning to germinate.
The child has two orders of faculties which are to be educated, essential and semi-essential; or in other words, roots and branches.
Radical faculties belong to the interior world, and the branchial to the exterior.
To produce a central effect on the child, the radical faculties must be first developed; to represent this effect, the branchial faculties must be developed.
The radical faculties belong entirely to Love; the branchial to knowledge and industry.
It is imperative upon us to follow the determination of the radical faculties, and to modify the branchial always in obedience to the radical.
It is the child, or the Love-Spirit in the child, that we must[Pg 270] obey, and not suffer the Parents or any one else to divert us from it.
Good is not to be determined by man's wishes, but Good must originate and determine the wish.
The Preceptor must watch attentively for every new exhibition of the child's radical faculties, and obey them as divine laws.
We must in every movement consider that it is the Infinite perfecting the finite.
All that is unnecessary in the external must be kept from the child.
The Preceptor's duty is, as far as possible, to remove every hindrance out of the child's way.
The closer he keeps the child to the Spirit, the less it will want of us, or anyone else.
The child has an inward, sacred, and unchangeable nature; which nature is the Temple of Love. This nature only demands what it will give, if properly attended to, viz.: Unfettered Liberty.
The Love Germs can alone germinate with Love. Light and Life are but conditions of Love. Divine capacities are made by love alone.
Love education is primarily a passive one; and, secondarily, an active one. To educate the radical faculties is altogether a new idea with Teachers at present.
The parental end must be made much more prominent than it has been.
The conceptive powers want much more purification than the perceptive; and it is only as we purify the conceptive that we shall get the perceptive clear.
It[Pg 271] is the essential conceptive powers that tinge all the consequences of the exterior conceptive powers.
We have double conceptions, and double perceptions; we are throughout double beings; and claim the universal morality, as well as the personal.
We must now educate the universal moral faculties, as before we have only educated the personal moral faculties.
It is in the universal moral faculties that the laws reside; until these laws are developed, we remain lawless beings.
The personal moral faculties cannot stand without the aid of the universal moral faculties, any more than the branches can grow without the roots.
Education, to be decidedly religious, should reach man's universal faculties, those faculties which contain the laws that connect man with his maker.
These reflections seem to me to be worthy of consideration. Should any of them strike you as worth while to make an observation upon, I shall be happy to hear it. Suggestions are always valuable, as they offer to the mind the liberty of free activity. The work we are engaged in is too extensive and important, to lose any opportunity of gaining information.
The earlier I receive your reply, the better.
I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
J. P. GREAVES.
In 1842, Mr. Alcott visited England with the aim to confer with the philanthropists and educators there, to exchange views, collect information, and gather hints on the subject of literary and social methods. Mr. Greaves was dead; but the living friends of the "First Philosophy" received him with hearty respect and joy, introduced him to men of literary and philanthropic eminence, and made his arrival the occasion of meetings for conversation on the religious, social and ethical questions of the day. The meetings were held mostly at an institution managed on his own methods and called by his own name, the school of Mr. Wright at Alcott House, Ham, Surrey. Strange people were some of those he met, Communists, Alists (deriving their name from Alah—the Hebrew name for God), Syncretic Associationists, Pestalozzians, friends and advocates of self-supporting institutions, experimental Normal Schools, Hydropathic and Philosophical Associations, Health Unions, Philansteries, Utopias of every description, new social arrangements between the sexes, new devices for making marriage what it should be.
The London Morning Chronicle, of July 5th, contained the following advertisement:
"Public Invitation.—An open meeting of the friends to human progress will be held to-morrow, July 6th, at Mr. Wright's, Alcott House School, Ham Common, near Richmond, Surrey, for the purpose of considering and adopting means for the promotion of the great end, when all who are interested in human destiny are earnestly urged to attend. The chair taken at three o'clock, and again at seven, by A. Bronson Alcott, Esq., now on a visit from America. Omnibuses travel to and fro, and the Richmond steamboat reaches at a convenient hour."
The call brought together some sixteen or twenty persons, from various distances; one a hundred miles; another a hundred and fifty. "We did not find it easy to propose a question sufficiently comprehensive to unfold the whole of the fact with which our bosoms labored," writes a private correspondent of the "Dial."
"We aimed at nothing less than to speak of the instauration of spirit, and its incarnation in a beautiful form. When a word failed in extent of meaning, we loaded the word with new meaning. The word did not confine our experience, but from our own being we gave significance to the word. Into one body we infused many lives, and it shone as the image of divine or angelic, or human thought. For a word is a Proteus, that means to a man what the man is."