But with all this love and hunger in my heart, I can not help sharing in the growing fear that modern woman, at least in more ways and places than one, is in danger of declining from her orbit; that she is com- ing to lack just confidence and pride in her sex as such, and is just now in danger of lapsing to mannish ways, methods, and ideals, until her original divinity may become obscured. But if our worship at her shrine is with a love and adoration a little qualified and unsteady, we have a fixed and abiding faith without which we should have no resource against pessimism for the future of our race, that she will ere long evolve a sphere of life and even education which fits her needs as well as, if not better than, those of man fit his.
Meanwhile, if the eternally womanly seems somewhat less divine, we can turn with unabated faith to the eternally childlike, the best of which in each are so closely related. The oracles of infancy and childhood will never fail. Distracted as we are in the maze of new sciences, skills, ideals, knowledges that we can not fully coordinate by our logic or curriculize by our pedagogy; confused between the claims of old and new methods; needing desperately, for survival as a nation and a race, some clue to thrid the mazes of the manifold modern cultures, we have now at least one source to which we can turn — we have found the only magnet in all the universe that points steadfastly to the undis- covered pole of human destiny. We know what can and will ultimately coordinate in the generic, w^hich is larger than the logical order, all that is worth know- ing, teaching, or doing by the best methods, that will save us from misfits and the waste ineffable of premature THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS and belated knowledge, and that is in the interests and line of normal development in the child in our midst that must henceforth ever lead us; which epitomizes in its development all the stages, human and prehuman; that is the proper object of all that strange new love of everything that is naive, spontaneous, and unsophis- ticated in human nature. The heart and soul of grow- ing childhood is the criterion by which we judge the larger heart and soul of mature womanhood; and these are ultimately the only guide into the heart of the new education which is to be, when the school becomes what Melanchthon said it must be — a true workshop of the Holy Ghost — and what the new psychology, when it rises to the heights of prophecy, foresees as the true para- dise of restored intuitive human nature.
CHAPTER XII MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING Dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus of brain — Difficulties in teaching morals — Methods in Europe — Obedience to commands — Good habits should be mechanized — Value of scolding — How to flog aright — Its dangers — Moral precepts and proverbs — Habituation — Training will through intellect — Examinations — Concentration — Originality — Froebel and the naive — First ideas of God — Conscience — Importance of Old and New Testaments — Sex dangers — Love and religion — Conversion.
From its nature as well as from its central impor- tance it might be easily shown that the will is no less dependent on the culture it receives than is the mind. It is fast becoming as absurd to suppose that men can sur- vive in the great practical strain to which American life subjects all who would succeed, if the will is left to take its doubtful chances of training and discipline, as to suppose that the mind develops in neglect. Our changed conditions make this chance of will-culture more doubt- ful than formerly. A generation or two ago ^ most school-boys had either farm work, chores, errands, jobs self-imposed, or required by less tender parents; they made things, either toys or tools, out of school. Most school-girls did house-work, more or less of which is, like farm-work, perhaps the most varied and most salutary as well as most venerable of all schools for the youthful body and mind. They undertook extensive i See author's Boy Life in a Massachusetts Country Town Forty Years Ago, Pedagogical Seminary. June, 1906, vol. 13, pp. 192-207.
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING works of embroidery, bed-quilting, knitting, sewing, mending, if not cleaning, and even spinning and weav- ing their own or others' clothing, and cared for the younger children. The wealthier devised or imposed tasks for will-culture, as the German Kaiser has his children taught a trade as part of their education. Ten days at the hoe-handle, axe, or pitchfork, said an eminent educator lately in substance, with no new im- pression from without, and one constant and only duty, is a schooling in perseverance and sustained effort such as few boys now get in any shape; while city instead of country life brings so many new, heterogeneous and distracting impressions of motion rather than rest, and so many privileges with so few corresponding duties, that with artificial life and bad air the will is weakened, and eupeptic minds and stomachs, on which its vigor so depends, are rare. Machines supersede muscles, and perhaps our athleticism gives skill too great preponder- ance over strength, or favors intense rather than con- stant, long-sustained, unintermittent energy. Perhaps too many of our courses of study are better fitted to turn out many-sided but superficial paragraphists, than men who can lay deep plans, and subordinate many com- plex means to one remote end. Meanwhile, if there is any one thing of which our industries and practical arts are in more crying need than another, it is the old- fashioned virtue of thoroughness, of a kind and degree which does not address merely the eye, is not limited by the letter of a contract, but which has some regard for its products for their own sake, and some sense for the future. Whether in science, philosophy, morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy than in the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE to concentrate themselves to one vocation, life-work, or mission, or when cathedrals or other yet vaster public works were transmitted, unfinished but ever advancing, from one generation of men to another.
It is because the brain is developed, while the muscles are allowed to grow flabby and atrophied, that the de- plored chasm between knowing and doing is so often fatal to the practical effectiveness of mental and moral culture. The great increase of city and sedentary life has been far too sudden for the human body — ^which was developed by hunting, war, agriculture, and manifold industries now given over to steam and machinery — to adapt itself healthfully or naturally to its new en- vironment. Let any of us take down an anatomical chart of the human muscles, and reflect what movements we habitually make each day, and realize how dispro- portionately our activities are distributed compared with the size or importance of the muscles, and how greatly modern specialization of work has deformed our bodies. The muscles that move the scribbling pen are an insignificant fraction of those in the whole body, and those that wag the tongue and adjust the larynx are also comparatively few and small. Their importance is, of course, not underrated, but it is disastrous to con- centrate education upon them too exclusively or too early in life. The trouble is that few realize what physical vigor is in man or woman, or how dangerously near weakness often is to wickedness, how impossible healthful energy of will is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how endurance and self-control, no less than great achievement, depend on muscle-habits. Both in Germany and Greece, a golden age of letters was pre- ceded, by about a generation, by a golden age of na- tional gymnastic enthusiasm which constitutes, espe- MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING eially in the former country, one of the most unique and suggestive chapters in the history of pedagogy. Sym- metry and grace, hardihood and courage, the power to do everything that the human body can do with and without all conceivable apparatus, instruments, and even tools, are culture ideals that in Greece, Rome, and Germany respectively have influenced, as they might again influence, young men, as intellectual ideals never can do save in a select few. We do not want ' ' will- vir- tuosos, ' ' who perform feats hard to learn, but then easy to do and good for show; nor spurtiness of any sort which develops an erethic habit of work, temper, and circulation, and is favored by some of our popular sports but too soon reacts into fatigue. Even will- training does not reach its end till it leads the young up to taking an intelligent, serious and life-long in- terest in their own physical culture and development. This is higher than interest in success in school or col- lege sport; and, though naturally later than these, is one of the earliest forms of will-culture in which it is safe and wise to attempt to interest the young for its own sake alone. In our exciting life and trying climate, in which the experiment of civilization has never been tried before, these thoughts are merely exercises.
But this is, of course, preliminary. Great as is the need, the practical difficulties in the way are very great. First, there are not only no good text-books in ethics, but no good manual to guide teachers. Some give so many virtues or good habits to be taught per term, ignoring the unity of virtue as well as the order in which the child's capacities for real virtue unfold. Ad- vanced text-books discuss the grounds of obligation, the nature of choice or freedom, or the hedonistic calculus, as if pleasures and pains could be balanced as measur- YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE able quantities, etc., so that philosophic morality is clearly not for children or teachers. Secondly, evolu- tion encourages too often the doubt whether virtue can be taug-ht, when it should have the opposite effect. Per- versity and viciousness of will are too often treated as constitutional disease; and insubordination or obstinacy, especially in school, are secretly admired as strength, instead of being vigorously treated as crampy disorders of will, and the child is coddled into flaccidity. Because the lowest develops first, there is danger that it will interfere with the development of the higher, and thus, if left to his own, the child may come to have no will. The third and greatest difficulty is, that with the best effort to do so, so few teachers can separate morality from religious creed. So vital is the religious sentiment here that it is hard to divorce the end of education from the end of life, proximate from ultimate grounds of obligation, or finite from infinite duties. Those whose training has been more religious than ethical can hardly teach morality per se satisfactorily to the noli me tangere ^ spirit of denominational freedom so wisely jeal- ous of conflicting standards and sanctions for the young.
How then can we ever hope to secure proper training for the wilH More than a generation ago Germany developed the following method: Children of Lutheran, Catholic and Jewish parentage, which include most German children, were allowed one afternoon a week for several years, and two afternoons a week for a few months preceding confirmation, to spend half of a school day with in- structors of these respective professions, who were nom- inated by the church, but examined by the state as to 1 Touch me not.
i MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING their competence. These teachers are as professional, therefore, as those in the regular class work. Each re- ligion is allowed to determine its own course of re- ligious instruction, subject only to the approval of the cultus minister or the local authorities. In this way a rupture between the religious sentiments and teaching of successive generations is avoided and it is sought to bring religious training to bear upon morals. These classes learn Scripture, hymns, church service, — the Cath- olics in Latin and the Jewish in Hebrew, — the history of their church and people, and sometimes a little sys- tematic theology. In some of these schools there are prizes and diplomas, and the spirit of competition is appealed to. A criticism sometimes made against them, especially against the Lutheran religious pedagogy, is that it is too intellectual. It is, of course, far more systematic and effective from this point of view than the American Sunday School, so that whatever may be said of its edifying effects, the German child knows these topics far better than the American. This system, with modifications, has been adopted in some places in France, England and in America, more often in private than in public schools, however.
The other system originated in France some years after the Franco-Prussian War when the clerical in- fluence in French education gave way to the lay and secular spirit. In these classes, for which also stated times are set apart and which are continued through all the required grades under the name of moral and civic instruction, the religious element is entirely ab- sent, except that there are a few hymns, Bible passages and stories which all agree upon as valuable. Most of the course is made up of carefully selected maxims and especially stories of virtue, records of heroic achieve- YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE ments in French history and even in literature and the drama. Everything, however, has a distinct moral les- son, although that lesson is not made offensively prominent. We have here nearly a score of these text- books, large and small. It would seem as though the resources of the French records and literature had been ransacked, and indeed many deeds of heroism are culled from the daily press. The matter is often arranged under headings such as cleanliness, acts of kindness, courage, truthfulness versus lying; respect for age, good manners, etc. Each virtue is thus taught in a way appropriate to each stage of childhood, and quite often bands of mercy, rescue leagues and other societies are the outgrowth of this instruction. It is, of course, ex- posed to much criticism from the clergy on the cogent ground that morality needs the support of religion, at the very least, in childhood. This system has had much influence in England where several similar courses have been evolved, and in this country we have at least one very praiseworthy effort in this direction, ad- dressed mainly, however, to older children.
Besides this, two ways suggest themselves. First, we may try to assume, or tediously enucleate a consensus of religious truth as a basis of will training, e. g., God and immortality, and, ignoring the minority who doubt these, vote them into the public school. Pedagogy need have nothing whatever to say respecting the absolute truth or falsity of these ideas, but there is little doubt that they have an influence on the will, at a certain stage of average development, greater and more essential than any other; so great that even were their vitality to decay like the faith in the Greek or German mythology, we should still have to teach God and a future life as the most imperative of all hypotheses in a field where, as MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING in morals, nothing is so practical as a good theory; and we should have to fall to teaching the Bible as a moral classic, and cultivate a critical sympathy for its view of life. But this way ignores revelation and super- natural claims, while some have other objections to emancipating or " rescuing " the Bible from theology just yet. Indeed, the problem how to teach anything that the mind could not have found out for itself, but that had to be revealed, has not been solved by modern pedagogy, which, since Pestalozzi, has been more and more devoted to natural and developing methods. The latter teaches that there must not be too much seed sown, too much or too high precept, or too much itera- tion, and that, in Jean Paul's phrase, the hammer must not rest on bell, but only tap and rebound, to bring out a clear tone. Again, a consensus of this content would either have to be carefully defined and would be too generic and abstract for school uses, or else differences of interpretation, which so pervade and are modified by character, culture, temperament, and feeling, would make the consensus itself nugatory. Re- ligious training must be specific at first, and, omitting qualifications, the more explicit the denominational faith the earlier may religious motives affect the will.
This is the way of our hopes, to the closer considera- tion of which we intend to return in the future, though it must be expected that the happiest consensus will be long quarantined from most schools. Meanwhile a sec- ond way, however unpromising, is still open. Noble types of character may rest on only the native instincts of the soul or even on broadly interpreted utilitarian considerations. But if morality without religion were only a bloodless corpse or a plank in a shipwreck, there is now need enough for teachers to study its form, drift, YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE and uses by itself alone. This, at least, is our purpose in considering the will, and this only.
The will, purpose, and even mood of small children when alone, are fickle, fluctuating, contradictory. Our very presence imposes one general law on them, viz., that of keeping our good will and avoiding our displeasure. As the plant grows towards the light, so they unfold in the direction of our wishes, felt as by divination. They respect all you smile at, even buffoonery; look up in their play to call your notice, to study the lines of your sympathy, as if their chief vocation was to learn your desires. Their early lies are often saying what they think will please us, knowing no higher touchstones of truth. If we are careful to be wisely and without excess happy and affectionate when they are good, and sad- dened and slightly cooled in manifestations of love if they do wrong, the power of association in the normal, eupeptic child will early choose right as surely as pleas- ure increases vitality. If our love is deep, obedience is an instinct if not a religion. The child learns that while it can not excite our fear, resentment or admira- tion, etc., it can act on our love, and this should be the first sense of its own efficiency. Thus, too, it first learns that the way of passion and impulse is not the only rule of life, and that something is gained by resisting them. It imitates our acts long before it can understand our words. As if it felt its insignificance, and dreaded to be arrested in some lower phase of its development, its instinct for obedience becomes almost a passion. As the vine must twine or grovel, so the child comes unconsciously to worship idols, and imi- tates bad patterns and examples in the absence of worthy ones. He obeys as with a deep sense of being our chattel, and, at bottom, admires those who coerce him, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING if the means be wisely chosen. The authority must, of course, be ascendancy over heart and mind. The more absolute such authority the more the will is saved from caprice and feels the power of steadiness. Such author- ity excites the unique, unfathomable sense of reverence, w^hich measures the capacity for will-culture, and is the strongest and soundest of all moral motives. It is also the most comprehensive, for it is first felt only towards persons, and personality is a bond, enabling any num- ber of complex elements to act or be treated as a whole, as everything does and is in the child's soul, instead of in isolation and detail. In the feeling of respect culminating in worship almost all educational motives are involved, but especially those which alone can bring the will to maturity; and happy the child who is bound by the mysterious and constraining sym- pathy of dependence, by which, if unblighted by cynicism, a worthy mentor directs and lifts the will. This unconscious reflection of our character and wishes is the diviner side of childhood, by which it is quick and responsive to everything in its moral environment. The child may not be able to tell whether its teacher often smiles, dresses in this way or that, speaks loud or low, has many rules or not, though every element of her personality affects him profoundly. His acts of will have not been choices, but a mass of psychic causes far greater than consciousness can estimate have laid a basis of character, than which heredity alone is deeper, before the child knows he has a will. These influences are not transient but life-long, for if the conscious and intentional may anywhere be said to be only a superficial wave over the depths of the uncon- scious, it is in the sphere of will-culture.
But command and obedience must also be specific YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE to supplant nature. Here begins the difficulty. A young child can know no general commands. "' Sit in your chair," means sit a moment, as a sort of trick, with no prohibition to stand the next instant. Any just- forbidden act may be done in the next room. All is here and now, and patient reiteration, till habit is formed, and no havoc-making rules which it cannot understand or remember, is our cue. Obedience can, however, be instinct even here, and is its chief virtue, and there is no more fear of weakening the will by it than in the case of soldiers. As the child grows older, however, and as the acts commanded are repugnant, or unusual, there should be increasing care, lest author- ity be compromised, sympathy ruptured, or lest mutual timidity and indecision, if not mutual insincerity and dissimulation, as well as parodied disobedience, etc., to test us, result. We should, of course, watch for favor- able moods, assume no unwonted or preternatural dignity or owlish air of wisdom, and command in a low voice which does not too rudely break in upon the child's train of impressions. The acts we command or forbid should be very few at first, but inexorable. We should be careful not to forbid where we cannot fol- low an untrusty child, or what we can not prevent.
Our own will should be a rock and not a wave. Our requirements should be uniform, with no whim, mood, or periodicity of any sort about them. If we alternate from caresses to severity, are fickle and capricious in- stead of commanding by a fixed and settled plan, if we only now and then take the child in hand, so he does not know precisely what to expect, we really re- quire the child to change its nature with every change in us, and well for the child who can defy such a changeable authority, which not only unsettles but