Symbolic education : a commentary on Froebel's "Mother play,"

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I. ATOxMISM

" Let us, then, I said, Leave this unknit republic to the scourge Of her own passions, and to regions haste Whose shades have never felt the encroaching axe, Or soil endured a transfer in the mart Of dire rapacity. There man abides, Primeval Nature's child. A creature weak In combination (wherefore else driven buck So far, and of his old inheritance So easily deprived ? ), but, for that cause, More dignified, and stronger in himself. Whether to act, judge, suffer, or enjoy. True, the intelligence of social ait Hath overpowered his forefathers, and soon Will sweep the remnant of his line away ; But contemplations, worthier, nobler far Than her destructive energies, attend His independence, when along the side Of Mississippi, or that northern stream That spreads into successive seas, he walks ; Pleased to perceive his own unshackled life, And his innate capacities of soul, There imaged : or when, having gained the top Of some commanding eminence, which yet Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys Kegions of wood and wide savanna, vast Expanse of unappropriated earth.

With mind that sheds a light on what he sees ; Free as the sun, and lonely as the sun. Pouring above his head its radiance down Upon a living and rejoicing world !

So, westward, tow'rd the unviolated woods I bent my way ; and roaming far and wide, Failed not to greet the merry mocking-bird ;

But that pure archetype of human greatness, I found him not. There in his stead appeared A creature squalid, vengeful, and impure ; Eemorseless, and submissive to no law But superstitious fear and abject sloth."

Wordsworth, The Excursion.

Chapter I. Atomism

It has often been observed that the dominant idea of an age gives form alike to its science, its politics, its philosophy, its theology, and its education. Thus the age of scientific atomism was also an age of political atomism, reaching its climax in the French Revolution; of philosophic atomism as illustrated in the sense theory of knowledge, and carried to its logical consequences by Hume in the denial of causality and true selfhood ; of theological atomism, shown in the crude deism which excluded a kind of atomic divinity from that aggregate of atoms which could only by courtesy be called the universe ; and of educational atomism, as set forth in the Emile of Rousseau. So, to-day, the reigning idea in all departments of thought is development, and we tirelessly repeat the evolutionary dictum, that " to know what a thing really is we must examine how it came to be,"

As a theory of human nature, atomism was a creed witli two main articles. Of tliese, the first affirmed man to be by nature good ; the second declared arts, sciences, institutions — in short, eveTything produced by man — to be wholly bad. The only salvation for humanity lay in return to the primitive state of savagism ; and so soon as men realized their deplorable condition they would exclaim in bitterness of heart, "Thou, who disposest of our understandings, deliver us not up to the fatal arts and sciences of our forefathers, but restore us to ignorance, innocence, and indigence, which alone can make us happy and which are precious in thy sight." *

Rousseau's attack upon civilization is wholehearted, as may be seen in the following extracts from Emile : " All our wisdom consists in servile prejudices ; all our customs are only subjection, bondage, and restraint. Civilized man is born, lives, and dies in slavery ; at his birth he is confined in swaddling clothes ; at death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he retains the human form he is fettered by our institutions."! Through this slavery character is debauched and courage destroyed; and man, unfit to live, is, "by the prescriptions of the physicians, the precepts of

* Rousseau's Inquiry into tlie Effects of the Arts and Sciences.

f Emile, (Gamier Freres), Paris, p. 31.

the philosopliers, and the prayers and exhortations of the priest, made ignorant how to die." The only remedy for this state of things is isolation. " Men were not made to be crammed together like ants in ant-hills, but to be scattered over the earth which it is their duty to cultivate. The more they collect together the more they corrupt each other. Infirmities of body and vices of the heart are the infallible effects of their too numerous concourse. Of all animals men are least adapted to live in herds. If they were crowded together as sheep are they would all perish in a short time. The breath of man is fatal to his fellows, nor is this less true in a figurative than in a literal sense." *

In view of the corruption incident to human intercourse, Rousseau's first educational requirement is the isolation of the pupil. As the solitary man Robinson Crusoe is the ideal human being, so the solitary education is the true education. Such persons as the pupil is forced to see must be so entirely dominated by the father or governor that he can calculate in advance their every word and act. In the ideal family life, as depicted in the New Hdloise, every servant in the house is represented as entering into the designs of the master for the education of his sons. In

* ^fimile, Book I, p. 34.

Emile the same conditions are insisted upon. " You will never," says Rousseau, " be master of your pupil unless you are master of all those about him " ; * and though he admits that such domination is difficult, perhaps impossible, he insists that it must be the end aimed at, and that he who most nearly approaches it will be the most successful educator.

Having secured the pupil so far as possible from the contamination of human intercourse, the ideal atomistic education may be safely begun by leaving him to the exercise of what Rousseau calls his " natural liberty." Here our author is in his element. " Let us," he says, " lay it down as an incontestable maxim that the first impulses of Nature are always right ; there is no original perversity in the human heart; there is not a single vice of which one may not discover how and whence it enters the soul." f The only thing necessary to make the pupil perfectly good is to leave him entirely free to do as he chooses. " A really free man wills only what he is able to do, and does what he pleases. This is a fundamental truth. Apply it to the state of childhood, and all the rules of education will flow from it." |

"There is only one science," continues our author, " which should be taught children, and that is the science of human duties." * This science is taught by carefully preserving the child from any sense of moral obligation. " The words command and obey should be ruled out of his dictionary, still more so, those of duty and obligation." f

"Never command the child to do the least thing. Do not let him even imagine that you claim to have any authority over him." | " Give him no kind of verbal lesson ; he should receive no lessons save from experience. Inflict upon him no kind of punishment, for he knows not what it is to be in fault. Never require him to ask pardon, for he is incapable of offending you. Lacking all sense of right and wrong, he can do nothing which is morally evil, or which merits either punishment or reproof." *

Rousseau is not blind to the practical difficulties involved in allowing the child to do as he pleases. He avoids them to his own satisfaction by granting an apparent rather than a real freedom. The pupil is constant!)^ watched, constantly duped, and, by a series of theatrical denouments, taught the nature of his acts. The artificiality and insincerity of the method are its sufficient condemnation.

As Emile is made virtuous through insensibility to moral obligation, so his mind is prepared for rational faith by being kept empty of all religious ideas. At fifteen years of age he hardly knows whether " he has or has not a soul," and is not yet " capacitated to believe in God." When, finally, the progress of his understanding leads him to religious inquiry, the " right use of his own reason will conduct him to the natural and true faith." This religion of reason, as Rousseau proceeds to show, is that deism which, while professing to worship a transcendent divinity, really denies God altogether. The Savoyard vicar, into whose mouth Rousseau puts his own confession of faith, knows that the Deity exists, and that his existence is independent of any of his creatures ; but, adds he, " I no sooner inquire where he is, and what is his substance, than he eludes my thought, and my troubled spirit ceases to know anything." * This inscrutable Divinity is the Designer and Orderer of the world, but it is by no means sure that he is its creator. The vicar is doubtful whether there be one or two self-existent principles, and the idea of creation *' confounds his understanding." With regard to the soul, his view is equally vague. " I feel," he confesses, " that I have a soul ; I know this both from sentiment and from thought ; I know that

* fimile, p. 309.

my soul is, but I know nothing of its essence, and I can not reason with regard to ideas which I do not possess." * One thing, however, incenses this rationalizing ecclesiastic, who knows nothing of the essence of God, or of the essence of the soul, and that is, to be told that God is a spirit and his soul likewise spiritual. "To conceive God and the soul as having the same nature " is the " debasement of the divine essence." f Such is the theological atomism to which the right use of reason shall conduct Emile. It requires little mental acumen to perceive that this so-called deism is really atheism in disguise.

As political atomism leads Rousseau to insist upon the isolation of the pupil, and theological atomism inspires his aversion to all religious teaching, so the taint of philosophic atomism may be recognized in the exaggerated emphasis he places upon the cultivation of the senses. Declaring sensation to be the source of thought, and affirming that in sensation the mind is wholly passive and receptive, he urges that, by controlling the order of the child's sense-impressions, we may determine the future order of his ideas. Moreover, since no art can be practiced without the proper implements, and since the senses are the implements through which knowledge is ac-

quired, to exercise the child in seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling is to make him capable of thinking and of learning. It is needless to expand these suggestions, for all readers familiar with the history of education will recognize in them the germ of the " object-lesson " which became so prominent a feature in the system of Pestalozzi. It may, however, be not unimportant to call attention to the fact that Pestalozzi's entire system was vitiated by his acceptance of the principle (fallen, since the time of Kant, into philosophic discredit), " Nothing in the intellect that was not previously in sense-perception." *

* In opposition to the suggestion of Rousseau with regard to exercising the senses and restraining the activity of the mind may be urged the following considerations :

1. In sensation itself the mind is not passive but active. To have a sensation is to " discriminate between an existing state of the self and other possible states." In deciding whether he is sleepy or hungry, whether he sees or hears, the infant exercises an activity of comparison.

2. Sensations must be distinguished from perceptions, which arise only " when the mind brings to the aid of sense-impression the ideas of causality, space, and time, which are furnished by its own activity," Through the idea of causality the mind recognizes something " objectively existent as the producer of its sense-impressions." Through the idea of space it recognizes this objectively existent somewhat as having boundaries, and through the idea of time is enabled to perceive its changes. In perception, therefore, the mind exercises a higher degree of self-activity than in mere sensation.

3. " Every act of perception is an act of recognition." This implies knowledge of the objects or attributes recognized.

To the exercise of the senses Rousseau adds that of the bodily powers, hut insists that the mind should be kept passive, and that during the period of childhood the aim of the teacher should be " to lose time " and to " train his pupil in the art of being ignorant." "If," concludes this lover of paradoxes, " you could do nothing and could prevent anything from being done ; if you

" First the mind recognizes a sense-impression, and through that impression an object ; then the nature of the object ; its identities with well-known kinds of objects ; its individual differences from those well-known kinds of objects. But the dif. ferences are recognized as identical with well-known kinds of differences. It is the combination of different classes or kinds of attributes that enables the mind to recognize the individuality of the new object. It is like all others and different from all others."

4. From these considerations it follows that the more the observer knows of the class of objects represented by the specimen present to his senses, the more rapid will be the perceptive process. Knowing what to look for, he loses no time in desultory and futile observation. Knowledge of the ideal archetypes of objects incites the mind to observation and verification. Hence, to develop powers of quick perception, it is necessary not only to exercise the senses but to increase the pupil's stock of general ideas, and thus illuminate the mind that uses the senses.

Readers interested in the philosophy of sense-perception are earnestly recommended to study carefully Dr. Harris's Thoughts on Educational Psychology, from which I have quoted freely in the foregoing remarks. Chapter VI, on "Time, Space, and Causality — Three Ideas that make Experience possible" — and Chapters IX, X, XI, on the Logic of Sense- Perception, will be found especially helpful. 3 could conduct your pupil healthy and strong to the age of twelve years without his being able to distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes of his understanding would be open to reason from your first lesson. Without prejudices and without habits, there would be nothing in him to thwart your efforts. Soon he would become under your hands the wisest of men, and by beginning with doing nothing you would have made a prodigy of education." *

A final mark of the influence of atomism over the mind of Rousseau may be traced in his attack upon books. " I hate books," he says, " for they only teach people to talk about what they do not understand." It is curious to hear Pestalozzi echoing these ideas, and inveighing against the art of printing, through which " eyes have become mere book-eyes, men book-men." It is more curious still to recall the number of books written by each of these enemies of books.

When the age for instruction arrives, Rousseau suggests that, in lieu of literary and linguistic studies, the pupil be taught a trade and be made to " invent the sciences." " No other book than the world, no other instruction than facts," t is the final dictum of this restless inno-

* fimile, p. 76.

t Barnard's Peslalozzi and Pestalozzianism, p. 73.

vator, who seems never to have reflected that facts are not fixed but expansive, and that only through the study of books wherein are garnered the fruits of all human observation and thought can the individual interpret aright his own partial and fragmentary experience. A pot of ferns is a fact, yet how different its import to the botanist and the child who, striving to interpret the unknown by the known, describes it as a pot of green feathers " ! * The earthworm is a fact, yet between the meaning of this fact to the boy who sees in it only bait for fishes and its meaning to Darwin the difference is incommensurable. And not even to botanist and naturalist do plant and worm tell all their secrets. The fact which is opaque to the ignorant man and translucent to the specialist is transparent only to the thinker who has learned to see " by wholes," and who from star and stone, from flower and feeling, has broken a pathway to the Absolute Mind :

" Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies — Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. Little flower ; but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."

* See a short monograph entitled A Pot of Green Feathers, by T. G. Roopcr, M. A., published by C. W. Bardeen. Syracuse, N. Y.

Rousseau's merit is that of the tornado and the conflagration, and we must always remember with gratitude his burning attack upon that formalism which, by teaching signs instead of the things they signify, fortifies ignorance in the stronghold of self-satisfaction. He cleared the rubbish of centuries from the field of educational theory, and thus made it ready for fresh plowing and sowing. Moreover, in his insistence upon the study of the child he pointed out the indispensable condition of educational reform. The results of his own observation are summarized in the following striking passage from La Nouvelle H^loise * — a passage upon which its author stamps his approval by repeating it word for word in Emile : " Nature wishes children to be children before they are men. If we pervert this order we shall produce precocious fruits — fruits which have neither maturity nor savor, and are soon corrupted. "We shall have young sages and old children. Childhood has its peculiar manner of seeing, feeling, and thinking; nothing is less rational than the attempt to substitute our own, and I should as soon think of requiring a child to be five feet high as to have judgment at ten years of age."

This cursory survey of tlie educational principles of Rousseau lias been inspired by the fact that current opinion tends to exaggerate the correspondences and minimize the differences between his views and those of Pestalozzi and Froebel. There are undoubtedly many points of resemblance between Pestalozzi and Rousseau, and likewise many points of resemblance between Pestalozzi and Froebel, but the points wherein Pestalozzi agrees with Froebel are precisely those wherein he differs from Rousseau. Between the views of Rousseau and those of Froebel there are in my judgment no affinities whatsoever.

DEVELOPxMENT.

" Because are thither pointed your desires Where by companionship eacli share is lessened Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs. But if the love of the supernal sphere Should upwardly direct your aspiration, There would not be that fear within your breast ; For there, as much the more as one says Our, So much the more of good each one possesses, And more of charity in that cloister burns." " I am more hungering to be satisfied," I said, " than if I had before been silent. And more of doubt within my mind I gather. How can it be, that boon distributed The more possessors can more wealthy make Therein, than if by few it be possessed ? " And he to me : " Because thou flxest still Thy mind entirely upon earthly things. Thou pluckest darkness from the very light. That goodness infinite and ineffable Which is above there, runneth unto love, As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam.

So much it gives itself as it finds ardor. So that as far as charity extends.

O'er it increases the eternal valor.

And the more people thitherward aspire. More are there to love well, and more they love there, And as a mirror, one rellects the other."

Chapter II. Development

The theory that the line of progress is not straight but spiral has never received more striking confirmation than in the revolution which dethroned atomism and crowned the idea of development autocrat of the wide realms of thought. Atomism was the denial of unity and the negation of process. It saw in the physical world a mere assemblage of independent " things " ; in *' things" mere congeries of atoms; in humanity an external aggregate of differing individuals ; and in knowledge nothing but sense-impressions, and the " faint images of these impressions called up in memory and thinking." In its view, moreover, the immediate phase of things was their reality, and the atom, the "noble" savage, and the sensation were respectively the truth of the physical world, of humanity, and of thought. Finally, it may be remarked that these assumed originals were themselves mere abstractions of the understanding, for atoms are the hypothetical results of analysis ; the " noble savage " has never existed save in the minds of Rousseau and his disciples, and the sensations so loudly declared to be the source of thought are themselves only known by isolating them from the totality of experience. The idea of development, on the contrary, has incited thought to an ever-widening synthetic activity. It has detached our gaze from objects to fasten it upon the energies which produce objects. It has impelled science to the conclusion that the laws of Nature, as well as the objects of Nature, have arisen through a process of evolution, and has inspired the corresponding psychologic doctrine that both the ideas and the so-called faculties of mind are the products of its own self-activity. It has shed fresh light upon the spiritual unity of mankind, and made it impossible for any new Rousseau to resuscitate the atomic individual. It has convinced us that the original state of man was not his ideal state, and that the golden age is yet to come. Nay, more : it has shown that, in truth, human nature exists only as it is created by self -activity, and that it is realized in the individual only through his participation in the results achieved by the race. In a word, it has pointed out, in every sphere, the priority of energy over being, revealed the active and universal as the originating source of the static and particular, and thus, while satisfying the craving of the mind for unity, thrilled the heart with the beauty of process.

This rapid extension of the idea of development into all provinces of thought recalls the Hindu story of " the tiny Brahman who, to humble the pride of King Bali, begs of him as much sand as he can measure in three steps. When the boon is granted, the tiny dwarf expands into the gigantic form of Vishnu, and, striding with one step across the earth, another across the air, and a third across the sky, drives Bali down into the infernal regions." * This story, usually interpreted as a myth of the sunrise, illustrates equally the sunrise of a new idea. Thus development, with one step across the earth has taken possession of our science, with another step across the sky has appropriated our theology, and striding across the air has made psychology and education its own forever.

The application of the idea of development to education has been in large measure the work of Pestalozzi and Froebel. To the former we owe the ideal of education as the harmonious development of inherent powers ; to the latter must be accorded the honor of having first clearly perceived the manifold implications of this ideal.

The mind of Pestalozzi was a battle-ground between the idea of development and the atomism he had inherited from Rousseau. Over the mind of Froebel the new ideal held sole and supremo sway, and so clear to him was its paramount significance that he could boldly afErm he would rather win from a tiny sand grain the history of its development than learn from God himself the structure of the universe.

The tendency of mind to make a symbol of Nature is illustrated afresh in every period of scientific advance. Thus, no sooner does Newton formulate the law of universal gravitation, than Swedenborg perceives therein " a mere external of the irresistible attractions of affection and faith." In like manner, Schelling recognizes in the opposing poles of the magnet a symbol of human consciousness, and Pestalozzi and Froebel discover myriad analogies between the evolution of physical organisms and the development of mind.

It should, however, always be remembered that an analogy is not a definition. It is as false and misleading to call the child an organism as it is stimulating to discover correspondences between the unfolding of his self -activity and the growth of plants and animals. The child's body is an organism in the true sense of the word, for it is "a whole composed of parts which are reciprocally means and ends " ; his mind is not an organism, for it is not composed of parts, neither is it separable into distinct faculties. It is a selfactive energy, having different phases of manifestation, but present wholly in each phase. It expresses itself in feeling, thought, and will, but there is no feeling in which thought and will are not latent — no true thought which does not incite a corresponding feeling and issue in an act — no genuine deed which is not the embodiment alike of feeling and of thought. "Living (feeling), acting, conceiving," said Froebel, " form a triple chord within each child of man, though the sound, now of this string, now of that, and then again of two together, may often preponderate." *

Keeping carefully in mind their merely symbolic character, physical correspondences may be found helpful in the study of spiritual growth. Availing myself of this help, I shall endeavor in the following pages to point out the conditions of development, its successive stages, its essential characteristics, and its conformity to ideal types.

The most obvious correspondence between the unfolding of the mind and the growth of organisms is that in both the condition of development is exercise of power. Use and disuse, long since

* Aus Froebel's Leben, p. 143.

recognized in the parable of the talents as the sources of spiritual gain and loss, have in our day come to be insisted upon as the sources of all gain and all loss. Use gives the blacksmith his brawny arm, the musician his nimble and flexible fingers, and the thinker his power of marshaling at will the battalions of his ideas. Disuse takes from the caged bird the power of flight, from the sedentary student the vigor of his limbs, from the man who indolently refuses to think and act the power of thought and action. Pestalozzi struck the keynote of educational reform when he wrote, in the Evening Hour of a Hermit : " Nature develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them ; they increase with use."

But though exercise is the indispensable condition of development, not all exercise is developing. The bird that flies too soon cripples its wings ; the child who walks too soon deforms his legs. Only that exercise which is proportioned to strength increases strength. All other is productive of harm.

Again, as an organism has many members, it is very easy through the undue exercise of one member to dwarf and even destroy others. In like manner mind may be deformed by the exaggeration of single phases of its activity. The undue exercise of thought dulls feeling and weakens will. The undue exercise of will contracts thought and so centralizes feeling as to impair social sympathy. The undue exercise of feeling dissolves thought into dreams and sinks will into vain desire. Nor is this all : for the abstract exercise of a single power, by weakening others, finally destroys itself. Isolated from feeling and will, thought congeals into formulas ; isolated from thought and will, feeling relapses into mere sensation; isolated from thought and thoughtillumined feeling, will petrifies into mechanical habit, or loses itself in the delirium of caprice. The harmonious development of mind implies, therefore, the equipoise of its several phases of activity.

To these generally recognized conditions of development must be added one upon which Froebel placed great stress. A physical organism develops by converting material appropriated from its environment into vegetable cells or animal tissues. In other words, it assimilates foreign material, and by assimilation impresses upon this material its own image. In the formative instinct of childhood Froebel discerned an analogous attempt of mind to stamp itself upon its environment. The child is constantly trying either to change something or to make something. This persistent effort hints to us that mind is somothing more than an intellectual stomach. Knowledge is food, but creation is life, and we do not live to eat, but eat to live.

Even as I write, I am conscious of stating a half truth. For if it be true that the end of knowledge is creation, it is at least equally true that the end of creation is knowledge. In the products of his activity man beholds himself as in a mirror. Creation, therefore, culminates in revelation. Froebel never loses sight of these two aspects of mind ; and if he tells us that " man made in the image of God must from the beginning of life be conceived and treated as a creative being," he insists with equal force that " to become conscious of self is the first business of the child and the whole business of man."