Yet we are going to inculcate more and more self-consciousness, teach every little Mary to be more and more a nice little Mary out of her own head, and every little Joseph to theorize himself up to the scratch.
And the point lies here. There will _have_ to come an end. Every race which has become self-conscious and idea-bound in the past has perished. And then it has all started afresh, in a different way, with another race. And man has never learnt any better. We are really far, far more life-stupid than the dead Greeks or the lost Etruscans. Our day is pretty short, and closing fast. We can pa.s.s, and another race can follow later.
But there is another alternative. We still have in us the power to discriminate between our own idealism, our own self-conscious will, and that other reality, our own true spontaneous self. Certainly we are so overloaded and diseased with ideas that we can"t get well in a minute. But we can set our faces stubbornly against the disease, once we recognize it. The disease of love, the disease of "spirit," the disease of niceness and benevolence and feeling good on our own behalf and good on somebody else"s behalf. Pah, it is all a gangrene. We can retreat upon the proud, isolate self, and remain there alone, like lepers, till we are cured of this ghastly white disease of self-conscious idealism.
And we really can make a move on our children"s behalf. We really can refrain from thrusting our children any more into those hot-beds of the self-conscious disease, schools. We really can prevent their eating much more of the tissues of leprosy, newspapers and books. For a time, there should be no compulsory teaching to read and write at all. _The great ma.s.s of humanity should never learn to read and write_--_never_.
And instead of this gnawing, gnawing disease of mental consciousness and awful, unhealthy craving for stimulus and for action, we must subst.i.tute genuine action. The war was really not a bad beginning. But we went out under the banners of idealism, and now the men are home again, the virus is more active than ever, rotting their very souls.
The ma.s.s of the people will never _mentally understand_. But they will soon instinctively fall into line.
Let us subst.i.tute action, all kinds of action, for the ma.s.s of people, in place of mental activity. Even twelve hours" work a day is better than a newspaper at four in the afternoon and a grievance for the rest of the evening. But particularly let us take care of the children. At all cost, try to prevent a girl"s mind from dwelling on herself, Make her act, work, play: a.s.sume a rule over her girlhood. Let her learn the domestic arts in their perfection. Let us even artificially set her to spin and weave. Anything to keep her busy, to prevent her reading and becoming self-conscious. Let us awake as soon as possible to the repulsive machine quality of machine-made things. They smell of death. And let us insist that the home is sacred, the hearth, and the very things of the home. Then keep the girls apart from any familiarity or being "pals" with the boys. The nice clean intimacy which we now so admire between the s.e.xes is sterilizing. It makes neuters. Later on, no deep, magical s.e.x-life is possible.
The same with the boys. First and foremost establish a rule over them, a proud, harsh, manly rule. Make them _know_ that at every moment they are in the shadow of a proud, strong, adult authority. Let them be soldiers, but as individuals not machine units. There are wars in the future, great wars, which not machines will finally decide, but the free, indomitable life spirit. No more wars under the banners of the ideal, and in the spirit of sacrifice. But wars in the strength of individual men. And then, pure individualistic training to fight, and preparation for a whole new way of life, a new society. Put money into its place, and science and industry. The leaders must stand for life, and they must not ask the simple followers to point out the direction. When the leaders a.s.sume responsibility they relieve the followers forever of the burden of finding a way. Relieved of this hateful incubus of responsibility for general affairs, the populace can again become free and happy and spontaneous, leaving matters to their superiors. No newspapers--the ma.s.s of the people never learning to read. The evolving once more of the great spontaneous gestures of life.
We can"t go on as we are. Poor, nerve-worn creatures, fretting our lives away and hating to die because we have never lived. The secret is, to commit into the hands of the sacred few the responsibility which now lies like torture on the ma.s.s. Let the few, the leaders, be increasingly responsible for the whole. And let the ma.s.s be free: free, save for the choice of leaders.
Leaders--this is what mankind is craving for.
But men must be prepared to obey, body and soul, once they have chosen the leader. And let them choose the leader for life"s sake only.
Begin then--there is a beginning.
CHAPTER VIII
EDUCATION AND s.e.x IN MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD
The one thing we have to avoid, then, even while we carry on our own old process of education, is this development of the powers of so-called self-expression in a child. Let us beware of artificially stimulating his self-consciousness and his so-called imagination. All that we do is to pervert the child into a ghastly state of self-consciousness, making him affectedly try to show off as we wish him to show off. The moment the least little trace of self-consciousness enters in a child, good-by to everything except falsity.
Much better just pound away at the ABC and simple arithmetic and so on. The modern methods do make children sharp, give them a sort of slick finesse, but it is the beginning of the mischief. It ends in the great "unrest" of a nervous, hysterical proletariat. Begin to teach a child of five to "understand." To understand the sun and moon and daisy and the secrets of procreation, bless your soul. Understanding all the way.--And when the child is twenty he"ll have a hysterical understanding of his own invented grievance, and there"s an end of him. Understanding is the devil.
A child mustn"t understand things. He must have them his own way. His vision isn"t ours. When a boy of eight sees a horse, he doesn"t see the correct biological object we intend him to see. He sees a big living presence of no particular shape with hair dangling from its neck and four legs. If he puts two eyes in the profile, he is quite right. Because he does _not_ see with optical, photographic vision.
The image on his retina is _not_ the image of his consciousness. The image on his retina just does not go into him. His unconsciousness is filled with a strong, dark, vague prescience of a powerful presence, a two-eyed, four-legged, long-maned presence looming imminent.
And to _force_ the boy to see a correct one-eyed horse-profile is just like pasting a placard in front of his vision. It simply kills his inward seeing. We don"t _want_ him to see a proper horse. The child is _not_ a little camera. He is a small vital organism which has direct dynamic _rapport_ with the objects of the outer universe. He perceives from his breast and his abdomen, with deep-sunken realism, the elemental nature of the creature. So that to this day a Noah"s Ark tree is more real than a Corot tree or a Constable tree: and a flat Noah"s Ark cow has a deeper vital reality than even a Cuyp cow.
The mode of vision is not one and final. The mode of vision is manifold. And the optical image is a mere vibrating blur to a child--and, indeed, to a pa.s.sionate adult. In this vibrating blur the soul sees its own true correspondent. It sees, in a cow, horns and squareness, and a long tail. It sees, for a horse, a mane, and a long face, round nose, and four legs. And in each case a darkly vital presence. Now horns and squareness and a long thin ox-tail, these are the fearful and wonderful elements of the cow-form, which the dynamic soul perfectly perceives. The ideal-image is just outside nature, for a child--something false. In a picture, a child wants elemental recognition, and not correctness or expression, or least of all, what we call understanding. The child distorts inevitably and dynamically.
But the dynamic abstraction is more than mental. If a huge eye sits in the middle of the cheek, in a child"s drawing, this shows that the deep dynamic consciousness of the eye, its relative exaggeration, is the life-truth, even if it is a scientific falsehood.
On the other hand, what on earth is the good of saying to a child, "The world is a flattened sphere, like an orange." It is simply pernicious. You had much better say the world is a poached egg in a frying pan. _That_ might have some dynamic meaning. The only thing about the flattened orange is that the child just sees this orange disporting itself in blue air, and never bothers to a.s.sociate it with the earth he treads on. And yet it would be so much better for the ma.s.s of mankind if they never heard of the flattened sphere. They should never be told that the earth is round. It only makes everything unreal to them. They are balked in their impression of the flat good earth, they can"t get over this sphere business, they live in a fog of abstraction, and nothing is anything. Save for purposes of abstraction, the earth is a great plain, with hills and valleys. Why force abstractions and kill the reality, when there"s no need?
As for children, will we never realize that their abstractions are never based on observations, but on subjective exaggerations? If there is an eye in the face, the face is all eye. It is the child soul which cannot get over the mystery of the eye. If there is a tree in a landscape, the landscape is all tree. Always this partial focus. The attempt to make a child focus for a whole view--which is really a generalization and an adult abstraction--is simply wicked. Yet the first thing we do is to set a child making relief-maps in clay, for example: of his own district. Imbecility! He has not even the faintest impression of the total hill on which his home stands. A steepness going up to a door--and front garden railings--and perhaps windows.
That"s the lot.
The top and bottom of it is, that it is a crime to teach a child anything at all, school-wise. It is just evil to collect children together and teach them through the head. It causes absolute starvation in the dynamic centers, and sterile subst.i.tute of brain knowledge is all the gain. The children of the middle cla.s.ses are so vitally impoverished, that the miracle is they continue to exist at all. The children of the lower cla.s.ses do better, because they escape into the streets. But even the children of the proletariat are now infected.
And, of course, as my critics point out, under all the school-smarm and newspaper-cant, man is to-day as savage as a cannibal, and more dangerous. The living dynamic self is denaturalized instead of being educated.
We talk about education--leading forth the natural intelligence of a child. But ours is just the opposite of leading forth. It is a ramming in of brain facts through the head, and a consequent distortion, suffocation, and starvation of the primary centers of consciousness. A nice day of reckoning we"ve got in front of us.
Let us lead forth, by all means. But let us not have mental knowledge before us as the goal of the leading. Much less let us make of it a vicious circle in which we lead the unhappy child-mind, like a cow in a ring at a fair. We don"t want to educate children so that they may understand. Understanding is a fallacy and a vice in most people. I don"t even want my child to know, much less to understand. _I_ don"t want my child to know that five fives are twenty-five, any more than I want my child to wear my hat or my boots. I _don"t_ want my child to _know_. If he wants five fives let him count them on his fingers. As for his little mind, give it a rest, and let his dynamic self be alert. He will ask "why" often enough. But he more often asks why the sun shines, or why men have mustaches, or why gra.s.s is green, than anything sensible. Most of a child"s questions are, and should be, unanswerable. They are not questions at all. They are exclamations of wonder, they are _remarks_ half-sceptically addressed. When a child says, "Why is gra.s.s green?" he half implies. "Is it really green, or is it just taking me in?" And we solemnly begin to prate about chlorophyll. Oh, imbeciles, idiots, inexcusable owls!
The whole of a child"s development goes on from the great dynamic centers, and is basically non-mental. To introduce mental activity is to arrest the dynamic activity, and stultify true dynamic development.
By the age of twenty-one our young people are helpless, hopeless, selfless, floundering mental ent.i.ties, with nothing in front of them, because they have been starved from the roots, systematically, for twenty-one years, and fed through the head. They have had all their mental excitements, s.e.x and everything, all through the head, and when it comes to the actual thing, why, there"s nothing in it. _Blase._ The affective centers have been exhausted from the head.
Before the age of fourteen, children should be taught only to move, to act, to _do_. And they should be taught as little as possible even of this. Adults simply cannot and do not know any more what the mode of childish intelligence is. Adults _always_ interfere. They _always_ force the adult mental mode. Therefore children must be preserved from adult instructions.
Make a child work--yes. Make it do little jobs. Keep a fine and delicate and fierce discipline, so that the little jobs are performed as perfectly as is consistent with the child"s nature. Make the child alert, proud, and becoming in its movements. Make it know very definitely that it shall not and must not trespa.s.s on other people"s privacy or patience. Teach it songs, tell it tales. But _never_ instruct it school-wise. And mostly, leave it alone, send it away to be with other children and to get in and out of mischief, and in and out of danger. Forget your child altogether as much as possible.
All this is the active and strenuous business of parents, and must not be shelved off on to strangers. It is the business of parents _mentally_ to forget but dynamically never to forsake their children.
It is no use expecting parents to know _why_ schools are closed, and _why_ they, the parents, must be quite responsible for their own children during the first ten years. If it is quite useless to expect parents to understand a theory of relativity, much less will they understand the development of the dynamic consciousness. But why should they understand? It is the business of very few to understand and for the ma.s.s, it is their business to believe and not to bother, but to be honorable and humanly to fulfill their human responsibilities. To give active obedience to their leaders, and to possess their own souls in natural pride.
Some must understand why a child is not to be mentally educated. Some must have a faint inkling of the processes of consciousness during the first fourteen years. Some must know what a child beholds, when it looks at a horse, and what it means when it says, "Why is gra.s.s green?" The answer to this question, by the way, is "Because it is."
The interplay of the four dynamic centers follows no one conceivable law. Mental activity continues according to a law of co-relation. But there is no logical or rational co-relation in the dynamic consciousness. It pulses on inconsequential, and it would be impossible to determine any sequence. Out of the very lack of sequence in dynamic consciousness does the individual himself develop. The dynamic abstraction of a child"s precepts follows no mental law, and even no law which can ever be mentally propounded. And this is why it is utterly pernicious to set a child making a clay relief-map of its own district, or to ask a child to draw conclusions from given observations. Dynamically, a child draws no conclusions. All things still remain dynamically possible. A conclusion drawn is a nail in the coffin of a child"s developing being. Let a child make a clay landscape, if it likes. But entirely according to its own fancy, and without conclusions drawn. Only, let the landscape be vividly made--always the discipline of the soul"s full attention. "Oh, but where are the factory chimneys?"--or else--"Why have you left out the gas-works?" or "Do you call that sloppy thing a church?" The particular focus should be vivid, and the record in some way true. The soul must give earnest attention, that is all.
And so actively disciplined, the child develops for the first ten years. We need not be afraid of letting children see the pa.s.sions and reactions of adult life. Only we must not strain the _sympathies_ of a child, in _any_ direction, particularly the direction of love and pity. Nor must we introduce the fallacy of right and wrong.
Spontaneous distaste should take the place of right and wrong. And least of all must there be a cry: "You see, dear, you don"t understand. When you are older--" A child"s sagacity is better than an adult understanding, anyhow.
Of course it is ten times criminal to tell young children facts about s.e.x, or to implicate them in adult relationships. A child has a strong evanescent s.e.x consciousness. It instinctively writes impossible words on back walls. But this is not a fully conscious mental act. It is a kind of dream act--quite natural. The child"s curious, shadowy, indecent s.e.x-knowledge is quite in the course of nature. And does n.o.body any harm at all. Adults had far better not notice it. But if a child sees a c.o.c.kerel tread a hen, or two dogs coupling, well and good. It _should_ see these things. Only, without comment. Let nothing be exaggeratedly hidden. By instinct, let us preserve the decent privacies. But if a child occasionally sees its parent nude, taking a bath, all the better. Or even sitting in the W. C. Exaggerated secrecy is bad. But indecent exposure is also very bad. But worst of all is dragging in the _mental_ consciousness of these shadowy dynamic realities.
In the same way, to talk to a child about an adult is vile. Let adults keep their adult feelings and communications for people of their own age. But if a child sees its parents violently quarrel, all the better. There must be storms. And a child"s dynamic understanding is far deeper and more penetrating than our sophisticated interpretation. But _never_ make a child a party to adult affairs.
Never drag the child in. Refuse its sympathy on such occasions. Always treat it as if it had _no_ business to hear, even if it is present and _must_ hear. Truly, it has no business mentally to hear. And the dynamic soul will always weigh things up and dispose of them properly, if there be no interference of adult comment or adult desire for sympathy. It is despicable for any one parent to accept a child"s sympathy against the other parent. And the one who _received_ the sympathy is always more contemptible than the one who is hated.
Of course so many children are born to-day unnaturally mentally awake and alive to adult affairs, that there is nothing left but to tell them everything, crudely: or else, much better, to say: "Ah, get out, you know too much, you make me sick."
To return to the question of s.e.x. A child is born s.e.xed. A child is either male or female, in the whole of its psyche and physique is either male or female. Every single living cell is either male or female, and will remain either male or female as long as life lasts.
And every single cell in every male child is male, and every cell in every female child is female. The talk about a third s.e.x, or about the indeterminate s.e.x, is just to pervert the issue.
Biologically, it is true, the rudimentary formation of both s.e.xes is found in every individual. That doesn"t mean that every individual is a bit of both, or either, _ad lib._ After a sufficient period of idealism, men become hopelessly self-conscious. That is, the great affective centers no longer act spontaneously, but always wait for control from the head. This always breeds a great fl.u.s.ter in the psyche, and the poor self-conscious individual cannot help posing and posturing. Our ideal has taught us to be gentle and wistful: rather girlish and yielding, and _very_ yielding in our sympathies. In fact, many young men feel so very like what they imagine a girl must feel, that hence they draw the conclusion that they must have a large share of female s.e.x inside them. False conclusion.
These girlish men have often, to-day, the finest maleness, once it is put to the test. How is it then that they feel, and look, so girlish?
It is largely a question of the direction of the polarized flow. Our ideal has taught us to be _so_ loving and _so_ submissive and _so_ yielding in our sympathy, that the mode has become automatic in many men. Now in what we will call the "natural" mode, man has his positivity in the volitional centers, and women in the sympathetic. In fulfilling the Christian love ideal, however, men have reversed this.
Man has a.s.sumed the gentle, all-sympathetic role, and woman has become the energetic party, with the authority in her hands. The male is the sensitive, sympathetic nature, the woman the active, effective, authoritative. So that the male acts as the pa.s.sive, or recipient pole of attraction, the female as the active, positive, exertive pole, in human relations. Which is a reversal of the old flow. The woman is now the initiator, man the responder. They seem to play each other"s parts. But man is purely male, playing woman"s part, and woman is purely female, however manly. The gulf between Heliogabalus, or the most womanly man on earth, and the most manly woman, is just the same as ever: just the same old gulf between the s.e.xes. The man is male, the woman is female. Only they are playing one another"s parts, as they must at certain periods. The dynamic polarity has swung around.
If we look a little closer, we can define this positive and negative business better. As a matter of fact, positive and negative, pa.s.sive and active cuts both ways. If the man, as thinker and doer, is active, or positive, and the woman negative, then, on the other hand, as the initiator of emotion, of feeling, and of sympathetic understanding the woman is positive, the man negative. The man may be the initiator in action, but the woman is initiator in emotion. The man has the initiative as far as voluntary activity goes, and the woman the initiative as far as sympathetic activity goes. In love, it is the woman naturally who loves, the man who is loved. In love, woman is the positive, man the negative. It is woman who asks, in love, and man who answers. In life, the reverse is the case. In knowing and in doing, man is positive and woman negative: man initiates, and woman lives up to it.
Naturally this nicely arranged order of things may be reversed. Action and utterance, which are male, are polarized against feeling, emotion, which are female. And which is positive, which negative? Was man, the eternal protagonist, born of woman, from her womb of fathomless emotion? Or was woman, with her deep womb of emotion, born from the rib of active man, the first created? Man, the doer, the knower, the original in _being_, is he lord of life? Or is woman, the great Mother, who bore us from the womb of love, is she the supreme G.o.ddess?
This is the question of all time. And as long as man and woman endure, so will the answer be given, first one way, then the other. Man, as the utterer, usually claims that Eve was created out of his spare rib: from the field of the creative, upper dynamic consciousness, that is.
But woman, as soon as she gets a word in, points to the fact that man inevitably, poor darling, is the issue of his mother"s womb. So the battle rages.
But some men always agree with the woman. Some men always yield to woman the creative positivity. And in certain periods, such as the present, the majority of men concur in regarding woman as the source of life, the first term in creation: woman, the mother, the prime being.