Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these movement plays, to the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers that this very serious aim underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the children. Law or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the children governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and commands their ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing the sense of personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difficult to do. The reward to the children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit. It is a form of obedience that really elevates the little one higher in the scale of being as an individual, without danger of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is swallowed up in social joy.
When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you, to those Kindergartens, which were taught by Frbel"s own pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the practice. More than one was played in the course of the three or four hours, and especially when the session was as much as four hours. It was done in a very exact though not constrained manner, and much stress seemed to be laid upon every part. The singing was not done by three or four, but all the children were encouraged to sing. Often the little timider ones were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the stronger and abler were exercised (as they must be so much in real life) in waiting, sympathetically, for the weaker. A great deal of care was also exercised in regard to the form and character of the play itself. Those of Frbel"s own suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, the actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, bees and birds. There were plays in which children impersonated animals, evidently for the purpose of awakening their sympathies and eliciting their kindness towards them. Many of the labors of human beings, common mechanics, such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were put into form by simple rhymes. The children sometimes personated machinery, sometimes great natural movements. In one instance I saw the solar system performed by a company of children that had been in the Kindergarten four years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere movement is in itself so delightful and salutary for children that a very little action of the imitative or fanciful power is necessary, just to take the rudeness out of bodily exercise without destroying its exhilaration.
My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is published by E.
Steiger, of New York, contains some of the princ.i.p.al plays, set to Frbel"s own music. I would gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge published in her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense.
But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is aimed at in the Kindergarten, as you will see when the bearings upon their habits of thought, of all that the children do, are pointed out to you, in the various occupations, which are sedentary sports, though the moral discipline is the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral discipline, exercising the children to _act_ to the end of making _others_ happy, rather than of merely enjoying _themselves_. If the individual enjoyment is not a social enjoyment, it is disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is lifted into the higher order for which he is created, by merely enjoying, whenever his enjoyment is _social_. I am of course speaking of that season of life under seven years of age, when the mind is yet undeveloped to the comprehension of humanity as a whole; when the good, the true and the beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be realized to their experience and brought within the sphere of their senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love, reverence or trust.
The words _good_, _beautiful_, _kind_, _true_, get their meaning for children by their intercourse with such persons. Specific knowledge of G.o.d cannot be opened up in them by any words, unless these words have first got their meaning by being a.s.sociated with human beings who bear traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections. To liken G.o.d"s love to the mother"s love, brings home a conception of it to children, for _hers_ they realize every day.
The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten is the First Gift of Frbel"s series, being used in both. The nursery use will have taught the names of the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, and made it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the child has had no other playthings prepared for him. He has doubtless used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could lay his hands on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is to be hoped he has been allowed to play out of doors with the earth, and has made mud pies to his heart"s content--not tormented with any sense of the--at his age--artificial duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be reserved for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by proper development of the mental powers.
In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful, and the teacher must see that the child learns to throw the ball so that it may bound back into his own hands; so that it may bound into the hands of another who is in such position as to catch its reflex motion. The children must learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards to each other.
When standing in a circle, the b.a.l.l.s may be made to circulate with rapidity, pa.s.sing from hand to hand, the children singing the accompanying song.
"Who"ll buy my eggs?" is a good play to exercise them in counting. And all these movement plays with the ball are admirable for exercising the body, giving it agility, grace of movement, precision of eye and touch.
These things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and no constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of these plays are not solitary, they become the occasion for children"s learning to adjust themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another"s fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even outside the room, till the desire of rejoining his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of them to make pleasant play possible. All children in playing together learn justice and social graces, more or less, because they find that without fair play their sport is spoilt; but this play must be supervised by the Kindergartner, in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness and quarreling. A Kindergartner, who is not a martinet, and who is herself a good play-fellow, will magnetize the children, and inspire such general good will that unpleasantness will be foreclosed in a great measure; but a company of children are generally of such variety of temperament and different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come from such inadequate nursery life, that the regulating Kindergartner has a good deal to do to prevent discords and secure their kindness to each other, and the reasonable little self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she will find a word is often enough; the question, Is that right? Would you like to have any one else do so? It is sometimes necessary to bring all the play to a full stop, in order to bring the common conscience to p.r.o.nounce upon the fairness of what some one is doing. I would suggest that the question be asked not of the cla.s.s, but of the individual culprit, whether what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child, with the eyes of the cla.s.s upon him, will generally be eager to confess and reform, because the moral sense is quite as strong as self-love, and especially when re-inforced by the presence of others. It is not worth while to make too much of little faults, and the first indication of turning to the right must be accepted; the child is grateful for being believed in and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; the moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child.
Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored b.a.l.l.s are most purely _playthings_; and there are none of the plays so liable to be riotous as the ball plays. There is the greatest difficulty in keeping children from being _too_ noisy, and it is not wise to make too much of a point of it. The ball seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for them to get good command of it. It excites them to run after it; and shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are reasonable limits.
The Kindergartner, in conversation before hand, should make them see that they may get too noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily induce them to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches the second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or a whole minute, as may be agreed upon. This can be made a part of the play, and to pause and be perfectly still in this way, will give them some conception of the length of a minute, and teach self-command, as well as make a pleasant variety.
The ball plays should always be accompanied and alternated, in the Kindergarten, with conversations upon the ball, naming the colors, telling which are primary, which secondary, and ill.u.s.trating the difference by giving them pieces of gla.s.s of pure carmine, blue and yellow, and letting them put two upon each other, and hold them towards the window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary colors. Ask them, afterwards, to tell what colors make orange, or purple, or green; and what color connects the orange and green; or the purple and orange, or the green and purple.
One of the other exercises, on the day of using the First Gift may be sewing with the colored threads on the cards; and the colors may be arranged so as to ill.u.s.trate the connections, &c., just learned. The use of the First Gift need only be once a week. It will then be a fresh pleasure every time during the whole of the Kindergarten course, even if it should last three years. After the children have become perfectly familiar with the primary and secondary colors, their combinations and connections, the lessons on colors may be varied, by telling them that tints of the primary colors and of the secondary colors, are made by adding white to them; and shades of them, (which will, of course, be darker,) by adding black to them. This may be ill.u.s.trated by flowers, as may various combinations of colors. A very little child, whom it was hard to train even to the hilarious and gay plays, and whose attention could not easily be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his apt.i.tude in detecting what color had been mixed with red to make a very glorious pink in a phlox. This child liked to sew, but was very impatient of putting his needle into any special holes. It proved to be the pleasure of handling the colored yarns, and he was always eager to change them and form new combinations. It may not be irrelevant to say here, in regard to ball playing, from which I have digressed to colors, that the ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with children.
The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhaustible. Children learn practically, by means of it, the laws of motion. Beware of any strictly scientific teaching of these laws _in terms_. You may make children familiar with the phenomena of the laws of incidence and reflection, by simply telling them that if they strike the ball straight against the wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then ask them whether it returns to them when they strike it in a slanting direction. By and by this knowledge can be used to give meaning to a scientific expression. It is a first principle that the object, motion, or action, should precede the _word_ that names them. This is Frbel"s uniform method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study does come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not mere superficial talk. It is the laws of _things_ that are the laws of _thought_; and thought must precede all attempt at logic, or logic will be deceptive, not reasonable. Most erroneous speculation has its roots in mistakes about words, which it is fatal to divorce from what they express of nature, or to use without taking in their full meaning.
In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of childhood, impressions are made clearly; and it should be the care of the educator to have all the child"s notions a.s.sociated with significant words, as can only be done by his becoming their companion in the play, and talking about it, as children always incline to do. It is half the pleasure of their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing.
In the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her dealings with it, are expressed in words that are important lessons in language; and together with language, we give a lesson in manners, by first trotting a child gently, and then jouncingly, to the words, "This is the way the gentle folks go, this is the way the gentle folks go; and this is the way the country folks go, this is the way the country folks go--bouncing and jouncing and jumping so." To describe what they are doing in little rhymes when playing ball, makes it a mental as well as physical play of faculty, and Frbel published a hundred little rhymes, and the music for as many ball plays.
It is not an unimportant lesson for children to learn, that the same things seem different in different circ.u.mstances. The fact that white light is composed of different colored rays can be ill.u.s.trated by giving the children prisms to hold up in the sunshine; and by calling their attention to the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when the clouds act as prisms, and to the rainbow. Children of the Kindergarten age, will be so much engaged with the beautiful phenomenon, they will not be likely to ask questions as to how the light is separated by the prism and clouds; they will rest in the fact. But if, by chance, a.n.a.lytic reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large ball on which all the six colors are arranged in lines meridian-wise, to which a string is attached at one pole, or both poles, can be given them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly. This will present the phenomenon of the merging of the colors to the eye by motion, so that the ball looks whitish from which you can proceed to speak of light as being composed of mult.i.tudinous little b.a.l.l.s, of the colors of the rainbow, in motion, and so looking white.
If some uncommon little investigator should persist to ask why things seem to be other than they are, he must be plainly told, that the reason is in something about his eyes, which he cannot understand now, but will learn by and by, when he goes to school and learns _optics_.
Children are only to be _entertained_ in the Kindergarten, with the facts of nature that develop the organs of perception, but a skillful teacher who reads Tyndall"s charming books and the photographic journals, may bring into the later years of the Kindergarten period many pretty phenomena of light and colors, which shall increase the stock of facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be developed, may work, or which the future painter may make use of in his art.
When Allston painted his great picture of Uriel, whose background was the sun, he thought out carefully the means of producing the dazzling effect, and drew lines of all the rainbow colors in their order, side by side, after having put on his canva.s.s a ground of the three primary colors mixed. When the picture was first exhibited at Somerset House, the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord Egremont, in a transport of delight; and for twice the sum the artist put upon it, that is, six hundred guineas. I do not know whether time may not have dimmed its brilliancy, since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint the sun at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time, is a great feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of science deliberately, according to the artist"s confession. But perfect sensuous impressions of color and its combinations, were the basis of both the science and the art.
This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying, that the First Gift has, for its most important office, to develop the organ of sight, which grows by seeing. Colors arouse _intentional_ seeing by the delightful impression they make. I believe that _color-blindness_, (which our army examinations have proved to be as common as _want of ear for music_,) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ of sight in a systematic way; just as _ear for music_ may be developed in those who are not born with it. Lowell Mason proved, by years of experiment in the public schools, that the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by beginning gently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so agreeable to them as to arouse their will to _try to hear_, in order to reproduce.
That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of the fact, that the organs of perception actually grow by exercise _with intention_, I will relate to you a fact that came under my own observation.
A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Aga.s.siz, who gave him, among his first exercises, two fish scales to look at through a very powerful microscope, asking him to find out and tell all their differences. At first they appeared exactly alike, but on peering through the microscope, all the time that he dared to use his eyes, for a month, he found them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that "it was the best month"s work he ever did, to form _the scientific eye_ which could detect differences ever after, _at a glance_," and proved to him an invaluable talent, and gave him exceptional authority with scientists.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An American translation has been published by Lee & Shepard, Boston.
[2] Since this lecture was written and delivered in Boston, I have received from Europe a French version of the Baroness Crombrugghe"s translation of Frbel"s _Education of Man_, and find that the first chapters a.n.a.lyze the first and second stages of development so much, in the way that I have done, that it gives me, on the one hand, confidence in myself as a true interpreter of Frbel, and on the other, new confidence in Frbel as a scientific observer and recorder of what I have been accused of founding on a merely sentimental knowledge. But scientific knowledge, or that gained by the exercise of the understanding, and sentimental knowledge, or what is gained by the intuitions of the heart, must necessarily correspond if the understanding is sound and the heart has been kept diligently to the issues of life. Mr. Emerson calls the intellect sensibility, and there is a fine meaning in this. Is there not a.n.a.logous instruction in calling the heart apprehension? What are love, justice, beauty, &c., but apprehensions of the primal relations established by G.o.d? Can the understanding have sensibility to them, unless apprehension of them exists from the beginning?
In the June, July and August numbers of the _Kindergarten Messenger_, for 1874, will be found translations of the first chapters of Frbel"s book, above mentioned. I began in February to print the translation of the introduction, which will be finished in the May number, and then will follow the first chapter, ent.i.tled "The Nursling," and in the following numbers the subsequent chapters, on the child"s development during the Kindergarten era. This work of Frbel"s was published at an earlier period of his career than 1840, when he began to devote himself almost entirely to the first stage of education, which, as he grew older, he felt to be the most important, because it enfolds the germs of all later developments.
[3] It is sold for ten cents by Hammett, publisher, in Brattle street, Boston.
LECTURE III.
DISCIPLINE.
SINCE the kindergartner is to receive the child from the nursery, and half of the work in the kindergarten is what ought to have been done in the nursery, I will give another lecture upon what Frbel thought the nursery ought to do for religious nurture; since, if it has not been done in the nursery, it must be done in the kindergarten.
We have seen that the soul takes possession of the organs of sense gradually, by tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, and touching that which is agreeable; and that the continuous exercise of the organs develops them up to a certain though indefinite limit to finer susceptibility of impression. We have seen that by exercising the limbs, the soul takes possession of them in particular and in general. Thus the nursery plays, improvised instinctively by all mothers, Frbel has enlarged, describing in his _Mother"s Book_ various duplicate movements of the limbs, especially of the hands, that, with the accompanying songs, have for their end, besides physical health, to make the mind discriminate various parts of the body and know their several forms and functions. This is the beginning of human education.
"Patty-cake" teaches a child that he has hands and fingers; "This little pig goes to market, this one stays at home," that he has toes. It is the child"s own body that first furnishes the objects of his attention to be a.s.sociated with words. From the beginning it is the instinct of the maternal nurse to talk to the child, which attracts him to observe the organs of speech; and this prompts the sympathetic use of his own organs. Speech is a function distinctively human, which, beginning in the nursery, is carried on carefully in the kindergarten, creating the sphere of the intellectual life; for words support the operation of thinking.
From all that I said of the _modus operandi_ of the child"s taking possession of his body in the nursery period, you see that childish action is involved in the mother"s action. It is _her_ wisdom, such as it may be, which must be the guide of the child"s will, as it is brought gradually out of the blindness of ignorance; and it is she, not the child, who is responsible for the perfection of this part of the child"s life.
And is not this, on the whole, the common sense of mankind? Does any sane person hold a baby, up to three years old, and often, indeed, much later, responsible for the state of its temper, or for the rightfulness of its action?
Nevertheless, the child is a moral person all this time, and it is of the last importance to his subsequent moral life whether or not his temper has been kept sweet, and his action according to law, or discordant. Discordant action must have a bad reactionary effect upon the temper, and interrupt or r.e.t.a.r.d the growth of the several organs of sense and of motion. Hence the mother or nurse must not neglect to use her power wisely as well as gently to prevent these evils, by duplicate movements that are rhythmic, and calculated to bring about some end that the child"s mind may easily grasp.
It is instinctive with every one, as soon as he begins to play with a child, whether it be reasonable or not, to talk to it about its being good or bad, although a little child cannot be good or bad, but only orderly or disorderly; and there is no little danger to his moral and spiritual future in antic.i.p.ating by our words the workings of his conscience before it has the conditions for its development. One of these conditions is such a sense of individuality as enables the child to say "I," with which it presently combines such perception of relationship to others as will say, "I ought,"--a phrase that occurs in all languages, and means something very different from "I will." It is of the greatest importance to keep this distinction in mind, for an imposed or artificial conscience almost certainly forecloses the natural or inspired conscience,--a truth largely ill.u.s.trated by the history both of families and of nations, from which we learn that periods of corruption and wild license invariably follow periods of extreme restraint and asceticism. And all conscientious action and moral judgment in children also presupposes _thinking_, which is a process that does not begin until after much repet.i.tion of impressions, being a reflective act, which a.s.sociates impressions with specific things and actions (as the etymology of the word suggests). Mere reception of impressions is pa.s.sive; but to compare impressions of difference or similarity (which individualizes _things_) is _active_. Therefore thinking and putting thoughts into words includes comparison and inference, and really _produces_ the human understanding, which we do not bring into the world with us, as we do our heart and will. Before there is a possibility of conscience or any moral judgment properly so called, the child"s affections (or feeling of relation with other persons) must be cultivated by the mother"s genial care, directing mental activity towards fellow-beings, instead of leaving the heart to turn back and stagnate upon self. The more impressible a child is, the more important is the mother"s or kindergartner"s providential care of his affections during this irresponsible, pre-intellectual period of his life.
I think the most frightfully selfish beings I have ever known were endowed with great natural sensibility, which was left to concentrate upon self, because the claims made by the sensibility of others were not early enough presented to the imagination of their hearts. By the growth of personal affections, the individual intensifies the feeling of individuality, which first comes to him by his having taken such possession of his body as enabled him to run alone; and this growth, whether intentionally directed towards that combination of his soul and body, which he begins to call himself or "I," or directed toward others, to whom he clings at first as part of himself (their embrace of him being necessary to his comfort), is cherished by the duplicate action of the mother. She moulds his heart in her heart, as she has moulded his bodily activity by her care and cheering sympathy, when helping out the power of his limbs in walking and manipulation. She half creates the child"s generous and devout affections, if she is herself faithful to their proper objects, starting him on the way of a brotherly humanity and a filial adoration of the common Father, long before the understanding has completely discerned the objects of these human and divine affections, which must be blended in order to continue vital and pure. But the moral and religious is the most delicate region of the child"s life, the _holy of holies_, into which "fools incontinently rush, though angels fear to tread." She can only be the mother of the soul as well as of the body of her child, on condition of being herself rich in love of others and in piety to G.o.d.
Frbel suggests this in the introductory poems of _Die Mutter Spiele und Kose Lieder_. The first five of these are the mother"s communings with herself upon the emotions that arise in her heart, as she nurses her baby in her arms, and realizes that to her and her husband has been sent a living witness of the "very present G.o.d," who is the author of their being, and has united them by a love that makes that being a blessing to themselves, which they are bound to extend beyond themselves. The rhymed introduction of the several little child-songs that follow are suggestions to her of the meaning of her instincts, and of the bearing on the development of the child"s heart and mind of the little gymnastics described. And just as she could not be the educator of her child into his individual body if she were a paralytic herself, so, if she be not affectionate and generous herself, she cannot educate him into the social body of which he is a living member; nor unless she loves G.o.d herself, can she inspire him to recognize the Parental Spirit of whom we are (as heathen poet and Christian apostle alike aver) the veritable children. "We are the offspring of G.o.d," said St. Paul, quoting from the Greek poet Aratus in the Sermon on Mars" Hill, which is a model of all reformatory instruction, whether religious or secular. I think all true instruction, proceeding from the known to the unknown, is both secular and religious, on the principle that to those who have the seed, can be given the increase.
In the first of these mother-songs of Frbel, the mother finds that the baby she holds in her arms, though another than herself, is in a certain sense one with herself; thus is unveiled (revealed) to her the Divine Fountain of Being, the Person of Persons, from whom she and her little one have severally come; and her feelings of wonder and grat.i.tude awaken the sense of responsibility to make her child grow conscious as she is of the common Father,--and thankful as she is for life in such close relation with herself,--who is the first form in which G.o.d reveals Himself to the child; for when he first looks away from his body so far as to perceive that his mother is another than himself, she fills the whole sphere of his perception!
Rousseau affirms that every child, if left to its own natural growth, would think its mother was its creator. And William G.o.dwin in his _Enquirer_ (or some volume of his writings) has quite an eloquent paper, setting forth that the natural religion of a child is to worship its earthly parents. I have made some observations and had a personal experience which makes me doubt this, though I do not doubt that the characteristics of parents nearly always determine the character of the child"s religion. But the question of who is his own creator does not naturally come up to a child, even when he begins to ask who made the things about him. His own consciousness is of "being increate," and when brought to know that his body grows old and must die, the fear that this causes is because he imaginatively a.s.sociates his undying self, which is a "presence not to be put by" with the perishing body. What the soul, by virtue of its inherent immortality, fears and hates, is loneliness, absolute isolation! And when we think of the body, which we identify with ourselves from the moment that we have taken it up and walked by its instrumentality, as put away alone in the ground, the undying person that the soul is, shudders, and can only be comforted by learning to conceive itself wholly detached from the decay, and housed within the bosom of Him who is the Alpha and Omega of our life; of Him whom we have learnt to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the process of living in human relations. For we know ourselves as individuals first by means of the body, and we know ourselves as a component part of the social whole of humanity by means of genial intercourse with our kindred, it being revealed to us that we are substantially social, as well as distinctly individual, by our instinctive horror of separation from them. Later in life only, there are pleasures of solitude for those few who by imaginative act make nature populous with personifications, and consequently the refracting atmosphere of the Divine Personality.
The baby that finds itself alone cries for and is comforted by the embrace which restores the sense of union with its mother. Seldom is a baby in such a wretched state of feeling that a tender embrace and kiss will not completely comfort it.
What a proof it is that G.o.d is _Love_, that the very embrace that symbolizes to the baby"s heart the sense of human companionship, gives its mind that impression of objective nature which is the first momentum of the human understanding! The gentle pressure of one sensitive body upon another produces counter-pressure, a resistance that is positively pleasurable, whereby the impenetrability of matter becomes a delightful instead of a frightful revelation to the mind of the Immutable Reality of the loving Creator, as the complement of our own changeful individuality! It is the first syllable of that word (or speech of G.o.d) made intelligible by the various qualities and forms of matter, the Truth which He is forever addressing to man. How gracious it is, that He should so inextricably mingle the first impression of matter with that perception of the _otherness_ of person that makes Love possible! Thus love and the sense of individuality are correlative creations and twin births. Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love (which in its healthy degree is innocent), and the perception of _otherness of person_, with whom it is delightful to be in free union, becomes the basis of the self-forgetting generosity of mankind. These opposite principles are at first mere and perhaps equal sources of satisfaction, having no moral character whatever. Afterwards, they become respectively hard selfishness or a weak and base servility, or they may rise into a majestic self-respect, and that sublimest love which is to make the human race, as a whole, the _image of G.o.d_, not only king over material nature, but one with the perfect Son of Man, also Son of G.o.d, who, with a humility and dignity equally venerable, is able to say, "I and my Father are One!"
But you will say that I am getting quite beyond the nursery.
In the earlier years, the growth of the religious life is merely germinal. And as it is involved within the mothers at the beginning, it must be cherished _sympathetically_ by her removing all occasion for self-care and self-defence, and thus prevent the sense of individuality from degenerating through fear into inordinate self-will and self-love.
The child should be treated with unvarying tenderness and consideration, without having his senses pampered into morbid excess by over-indulgence, but above all things, never wounding nor frightening his heart, nor repressing the simple and healthy expression of his feelings and thoughts. For enforced repression tends to produce ugly temper, baseness, or subtlety, according to the child"s temperament, which is also in imperfect social harmony, if not absolutely quarrelsome. It must be her work, therefore, not only to complete the child"s organic education, but to take him, as it were, into her own affectionate spirit by using the methods which Frbel has suggested to the mother for the discipline of her infants. (I use this word _discipline_ in its true sense of teaching; not in the sense of _punishment_. That the word _discipline_ should ever have come to mean punishment is a severe commentary on the ideas and modes of education that have hitherto prevailed in Christendom.)
The kindergartner, as well as the mother, must be thoroughly grounded in the faith that G.o.d has done His part in the original endowment of children; and that He is truly present with her, helping her to remedy the effects of the mother"s shortcomings. She will certainly succeed in her work if she studies His laws with an earnest purpose to carry them out, first in the government of herself, and then in leading the children to self-government. Wordsworth in his _Ode to Duty_, sings:--
"There are who ask not if Thine eye Be on them, who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth.
_Glad hearts!_ without reproach or blot, Who do Thy work, and know it not!
And blest are they who in the main This happy faith still entertain, Live in the spirit of this creed, Yet find another strength according to their _need_.
May joy be theirs while life shall last, And _Thou_, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast."
Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found in this condition when